by Editorial Board
Chicago Tribune
September 9, 2016
Last month comedian John Oliver unleashed a caustic — and funny — broadside on charter schools in America. He spotlighted the worst of the worst charters, the ones that fail students, escape rigorous oversight and cost taxpayers. If you want to know how any of that is funny, well, just watch the video.
The pro-charter Center for Education Reform, however, wasn’t amused. The attack was “a very unfair, unfortunate, unbalanced, unwarranted and generally unhinged tirade against charter schools,” it harrumphed in a statement.
But then the group cleverly responded with a video contest, “Hey John Oliver, Back off My Charter School!” The center offers a $100,000 prize to the chosen school of the winner who “shows John Oliver why making fun of charter schools is no laughing matter … and why we need more opportunity, not less.”
What a great opportunity for the winner, whoever she or he will be, to dispense with defensiveness and respond in kind to Oliver’s tirade: with facts and with a dollop of humor, we hope.
What’s not amusing, though, is the NAACP’s updated stance on charters. In July, NAACP delegates passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools, pending an October vote of its national board. The NAACP justified its wrong-headed move by asserting that charters have aggravated school segregation, eroded local control of schools, wasted public funds, and disproportionately disciplined minority students. The NAACP is joined by The Movement for Black Lives, an alliance of more that 50 advocacy groups, in declaring charters the wrong antidote to failing schools.
But they’re missing the point. As with all public schools — and remember, charters are public schools — there are good ones and bad ones. Charters have freedom to innovate in educating children and a limited-time contract to produce results. If they fail, they should close. And district leaders should make sure that happens.
Last year, Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool launched an aggressive push to force improvement of flailing charters and more swiftly close those that don’t measure up. We applauded that move, which came as 42 aldermen demanded that CPS slap a moratorium on charter expansion. The City Council proposal died, but the idea of strangling charter expansion staggers on, emerging as part of the long-running talks on a new teachers contract between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union. Amazingly, CPS has volunteered to squelch its own charter expansion to appease charter-loathing teachers union officials.
We oppose a moratorium or caps on charter numbers because some schools, such as the Noble Network of Charter Schools, are stellar performers. Others aren’t. Why not let the best thrive and expand in Chicago?
Charters grow not because district officials lavish resources on them — they don’t — but because the schools deliver results. A 2015 Stanford University study of charters in 41 urban areas in 22 states showed significant long-term gains: Low-income black students received the equivalent of 59 days of additional learning in math and 44 days of additional learning in reading compared with their peers in traditional schools.
Parents sent 61,000 children to Chicago charter schools last year in the hope that they would learn more. Mature more. Succeed in rigorous settings.
We anticipate watching the winning video in the Beat John Oliver contest. We hope it’s a hoot. And we hope NAACP board members take their own look, and consult with many parents of charter students, before the October vote.
In addition to the Chicago Tribune, you may find this article on The Columbus Dispatch, Watertown Daily Times,The Lawton Constitution,The (Norwich) Bulletin, and Arca Max.