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Charter schools: A real choice?
While vouchers remain the most contentious school choice topic, charter schools have more recently come to the forefront in the school choice debate. Longtime supporters of the charter school concept, including teacher associations, are rethinking their stance given the recent headline-grabbing stories on charter school closures and fiscal mismanagement, dismal accountability ratings in Texas, and a new federal report showing 4th-grade charter school students performing a half-year behind public school students. Charter schools do offer school choice, but is it a meaningful one? A closer look may shed some light on the future of charter schools in Texas and the United States.
History and background
The Texas Legislature adopted legislation allowing charter schools in 1995 during the 74th legislative session, and just one year later, the State Board of Education (SBOE) granted 17 charters. Then-Governor George W. Bush, who signed the charter school legislation into law, predicted that charter schools would “change the face of American education,” if properly implemented. Charter schools were initially created to be laboratories of innovation and were expected to thrive without all the regulations and bureaucracy. Though legislation to tighten controls was passed in 2001, charters remain self-governed, are run outside the control of a local school board, and are free from many of the mandates that some say burden public schools, such as class-size limits and teacher contracts.
Today’s Texas charter school picture
There are currently 190 charter school operators managing 274 campuses with more than 70,000 students in Texas. Last year, Texas spent $340 million on charter schools, but unlike traditional public schools, charter schools receive no public money for facilities nor can they levy taxes. During the 2001-02 school year, charter schools received on average almost $2,000 less per student from the state than did traditional public schools; however, charters are able to obtain additional funding from other sources such as private donations.
What the numbers say
The Texas charter school experiment has been questioned and tested numerous times during the last eight years. Most recently, charter schools have been in the news regarding their accountability ratings–or lack thereof. More than 52 percent of charter school campuses were not rated this year, compared to 12 percent of public school campuses. The majority of charter schools were not rated because they are classified as alternative schools that use nontraditional methods of teaching students who are at-risk of dropping out. These schools will be rated next year under an alternative system.
Notwithstanding the high number of charter campuses that were not rated, the showing of charter schools that were rated was dismal: 10.6 percent of charter schools were rated academically unacceptable, compared to less than 1 percent of public schools, and only 42 percent of charter school students passed the TAKS compared to 67 percent of public school students. Of 190 charter school operators (operators of more than one campus are rated similarly to a school district), 21 are rated academically unacceptable (11.1 percent), 59 are rated academically acceptable (31.1 percent), 11 are rated recognized (5.8 percent), and 6 are rated exemplary (3.2 percent). Charter school operators account for 21 of the 26 academically unacceptable districts statewide, with the remaining five being traditional public school districts.
Based on the ratings, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) informed seven charter schools that their performance warranted the appointment of special campus intervention teams. These teams will recommend steps for improving student achievement, ranging from staff replacements to possible closure. Since the 1995 law allowing charters was enacted, five charter schools have been shut down by TEA for poor academic performance, and an additional 26 charter schools have closed and had their charters cancelled or returned to TEA.
Aside from the accountability system, charters must be evaluated by the state each year. TEA has evaluated charter schools six times since their inception in 1996, and the seventh-year evaluation is expected in early 2005. These evaluations have shown charter schools perform well below the state average on the state assessment; the charter-traditional school achievement gap remains large; charter school students have fewer advanced course completions and lower end-of-course passing rates than traditional public school students; and charter schools have lower attendance rates and higher dropout rates than traditional public schools.
Money well spent?
During recent budget hearings, Sen. Royce West (D-Dallas) questioned Texas Commissioner of Education Shirley Neeley about whether the money being sent to charter schools is money well spent. While Commissioner Neeley did acknowledge the struggles of several charter schools, she stated that on the whole charters were doing a good job.
Yet the media regularly reports stories of financial mismanagement and poor ratings. At the Texas Academy of Excellence, an Austin charter school, taxpayer money totaling approximately $57,000 was allegedly used to buy a Lincoln Navigator for the superintendent. The school credit card was also used for hotel rooms in London, Spain, Nairobi, Kenya and Nigeria.
Charter school supporters have defended poor ratings by noting that students who attend charter schools are often students who would have dropped out or who, without charter schools, would have fallen through the cracks in public schools. Proponents of charters schools also argue that charter school students are from low-income families or have not succeeded at other schools; however, the passing rate for students classified as low-income in public schools was 56 percent, 14 points higher than the charter school passing rate in 2004.
Despite the news of failing charter schools, some have been quite successful. One of the most recognized charter school successes is the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP.) In 2003, KIPP Academy Houston was named a No Child Left Behind (NCLB) - Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE). KIPP has four charter campuses, all of which received ratings of academically acceptable or recognized in 2004. Clearly, one must look at the possible correlation between the success of the KIPP program and the money spent, since figures from TEA’s latest charter school evaluation indicate KIPP spent $10,378 per student for the school year.
Obtaining a charter
There are several ways to obtain a charter in Texas. The most widely used mechanism to date is via the SBOE, which may grant up to 215 open-enrollment charters.
A charter also can be granted to a college or university by the SBOE. This is the second year for the University of Texas Elementary Charter School, and Manuel J. Justiz, dean of the university’s College of Education, envisions several benefits from the program. “This charter school will provide an unusual opportunity for the College of Education to determine what works in improving student performances and to share these findings with schools across the state of Texas.” Justiz said. The University of Texas Elementary Charter School was not rated this year.
A district may convert a school to a campus charter, once a petition signed by a majority of classroom teachers and parents of a majority of the students at each school campus is received and the board gives approval. The San Antonio Independent School District board of trustees has approved 14 charters in the district through this process, and board policy allows them to grant up to 10 charters a year. Each charter is granted for a three-year period and is reviewed annually. [NOTE: Teachers should weigh their options before signing a petition to change a school to a charter campus or seeking employment with a charter school, since charter school employees are not entitled to all of the same legal protections as employees of independent school districts, such as contracts, sick leave and class size limits.]
In 2003, the Legislature approved another option, simply requiring board approval for a school district to open a new campus as a charter.
Also during the last session, Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano) attempted to make it easier to create a home-rule charter. House Bill 859 would have allowed school districts to propose a home-rule school district charter to voters upon a petition signed by at least 5 percent of the number of voters casting votes in the district’s most recent gubernatorial election (rather than the more restrictive 5 percent of all registered voters currently required) or upon majority (rather than 2/3) vote of the total membership of the board of trustees. His bill also would have eliminated the minimum voter turnout required by current law. The district’s conversion to home-rule status would eliminate what some call mandates and others consider protections of the Texas Education Code, including class size limits, contract requirements, minimum salary schedule and planning and preparation time. Though Madden’s bill easing requirements for creating home-rule school districts was defeated, it could certainly reappear in the upcoming session.
The national charter school picture
The problems that have plagued Texas charter schools also have cropped up across the nation, with the most critical issue being poor student performance. There are 3,000 publicly financed, privately managed charter schools operating in 40 states educating more than 600,000 students. Recently, the New York Times reported that Bill Gates of Microsoft fame gave his largest political donation ever to the charter school cause; however, many educators and parents continue to question whether charter schools’ less-than-stellar record warrants the money they receive.
In August, the first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and public schools was released without fanfare by the USDE. This was likely due to the results, which showed charter school students performing at lower levels than their traditional public school counterparts. The information provided shows charter school 4th graders performing about half a year behind traditional public school students. The study also analyzed urban schools and schools with predominantly low-income students, and disaggregated data by race and ethnicity. In almost all cases, traditional public school students outperformed charter school students, which is particularly interesting since one option under NCLB for chronically failing traditional public schools is to send the students to charter schools. Information like the USDE report raises significant questions about the ability of charter schools to “rescue” students from low-performing, traditional public schools.
Conclusion
This year has brought charter schools into the spotlight once again with the collapse of 60 charter schools in California just weeks before the start of school, a poor report from the USDE and low ratings for many charter schools under the Texas accountability ratings system. While statistics and studies don’t always tell the whole story, many think there is cause for concern and close scrutiny of charter schools. The lessons learned from charter schools are also likely to be applicable in the school voucher debate. HB 12 by Rep. Frank Corte (R-San Antonio), pre-filed for the upcoming session, would create pilot voucher programs in the state’s six largest districts. Many charter schools formerly operated as private schools and legislative approval of a voucher program would likely result in a new crop of private schools similar to those that sprang up as a result of the charter movement.
