by Hayat Norimine
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
July 19, 2012
Voters will again decide this year whether they think charter schools can improve high-school education in Washington state.
The issue comes before the voters at a critical time in Washington’s economic future. Washington’s demand for well-educated employees grows with the competing job market, but the state isn’t producing the number of college graduates it needs. The question is whether charter schools could help to close that gap.
On July 6, education groups presented their petition to have Initiative 1240 added to the November ballot.
The petition had about 350,000 signatures, well above the required 241,153 signatures to put Initiative 1240 on the ballot. Charter schools are currently banned from nine states, including Washington, and the initiative would create 40 charter schools in Washington state over the course of five years.
Washington voters have rejected charter schools three times before — in 1996, 2000 and a third time in 2004.
The state would fund charter schools, which would be independent public schools. But local school districts wouldn’t oversee them.
That provides flexibility for the schools’ choice in curriculum and teaching, but opponents of charter schools say the district regulations keep public schools accountable.
Kara Kerwin, vice president of external affairs for the Center of Education reform, believes charter schools can give an education other public schools can’t offer with the regulations that school districts have in place.
What’s important to both opponents and proponents of the initiative is whether charter schools can offer higher success rates for high-school students, and a large part of that means the schools’ ability to send high-school students to college.
University of Pennsylvania’s State Review Project, published last January by education professors, revealed that while Washington state attracts well-educated leaders, the state itself is not producing as many bachelor’s degrees as the state needs, calling Washington a “leadership vacuum.” And the review projects that 67 percent of jobs in Washington will require higher-education degrees by 2018.
Pretty cumbersome sentence. So the state needs to send more kids to college. Will charter schools help do that?
“I think Washington needs an education reform,” said Paul Hill, founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) and professor at the University of Washington Bothell. “We definitely need to be open to how to use technology and open to new ways of motivating students. … [Charter schools are] a decent way to protect kids and protect state money, and at the same time give opportunity for innovation that we blocked up until now.”
Washington’s problem with producing more college graduates fundamentally lies with getting high-school students access to higher education. Once high schoolers have access, Washington’s overall retention rate for colleges and universities is much higher than the national average.
Getting high-school students on track for college is the challenging part.
“Improving students’ academic readiness for college is an important part of improving bachelor’s degree production,” Laura Perna, researcher for the State Review Project and professor of education in the University of Pennsylvania, said in an email. “The high school is clearly a critical part of the process of enrolling and succeeding in college for traditional-age students.”
The Public Disclosure Commission states that Yes On 1240 raised $2.3 million to get the allotted signatures on the petition for Initiative 1240, and Washington’s wealthy leaders in technology were the most generous donators. Only two donators gave the initiative less than $500, a couple who donated $25; contributors include the parents of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings — and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who gave the largest amount of $1 million.
Hill says charter schools can educate students in more innovative ways, especially in their use of technology, but those opposed to the initiative see the large donations from the wealthy as a discouraging sign that the charter schools wouldn’t benefit those in need of education reform.
Opponents, including the largest teachers union in the state, hold concerns over the reallocation of state education funds to independent public schools and think the public schools already in place are underfunded enough as it is, and that the real answer to reform is simply investing more money in traditional public schools.
“Washington’s educators are already offering creativity, flexibility and choice for all students in all public schools,” Mary Lindquist, president of Washington Education Association (WEA), said in a press release. “Instead of diverting scarce resources from existing public school classrooms and spending it on unaccountable charter schools for a few students, we should be investing more in the innovative public schools we already have.”
Kara Kerwin, vice president of external affairs for the Center for Education Reform, said the money should be following the students and that they should have the choice to a different education. She calls the argument “one of these scare tactics to help preserve the system.”
“It’s not the public school system’s money,” Kerwin said. “It’s the taxpayers’ money that is supposed to follow their kids to school. … If a child chooses to go to a public charter school, that money should follow them.”
“Washington state is one of the highest in terms of school funding,” Kerwin added, “but they still don’t get the results.”
Limitations that apply to traditional public schools and not charter schools include a long process of approval of the curriculum and regulations for teaching – traditional public schools require certain qualifications to teach, whereas charter schools may have more freedom to hire teachers who have good professional backgrounds and lack state-approved credentials. Additionally, charter schools can hire their own principals without approval by the school district.
Opponents still question charter schools’ effectiveness. WEA states that 40 percent of charter schools “perform worse” than traditional public schools, and only 17 percent of charter schools “provide better education opportunities for a few students.”
Proponents of charter schools claim that independent public schools have more potential to close the minority achievement gap and potentially prepare more minority students for college; the Wall Street Journal reported that the Academic Performance Index (API) for black students in charter schools compared to traditional public schools improve significantly, and that minority parents work harder to get their children into charter schools, where they think their children can succeed.
But Kerwin believes charter schools’ potential for education reform isn’t limited to minority students; charter schools without the “red tape” surrounding public school systems’ bureaucracies, she said, can benefit any student.
“Minorities have been really let down over the years in traditional public school systems, so I think we see larger gain there,” Kerwin said. “It’s not to say that kids in affluent suburbs don’t need choice.”