My latest essay, which is a bit unusual for me in that it promotes a national government policy.
It would provide grants to states to support the administrative apparatus needed to ensure that charter school operators are given both a fair opportunity to offer educational alternatives and timely audits to ensure that they meet their responsibilities to students and parents. The grants should be sufficient to cover much more than the cost of this administrative apparatus. That way, recalcitrant states will have a strong incentive to adopt best practices for approving and evaluating charter schools.
I am not entirely sure that this is a good idea. But living in charter-hostile Maryland, I think it would take something like this to get charters going here.
Twenty-five years ago, charter schools hadn’t even been dreamed up. Today they are mushrooming across the country. There are 6,500 charter schools operating in 42 states, with more than 600 new ones opening every year. Within a blink there will be 3 million American children attending these freshly invented institutions (and 5 million students in them by the end of this decade).
1. As I see it, the main advantage that charter schools have over public schools is fact that bad teachers will tend to be fired and bad charters schools will tend to be closed.
2. Charter schools may follow a Clayton Christensen “disruptive innovation” path. That is, at first they will cater to low-income consumers. However, as they prove themselves in that niche, they may rapidly move up-market. Right now, many affluent parents are very attached to their public schools. However, that is an equilibrium that could tip. If parents come to view charter-school children as having an advantage in, say, college preparation, they will exit the regular public school system with great haste.
3. Another reason that charters may take off quickly in states and school districts that allow them to compete is that good young teachers are likely to prefer working at charter schools. If this happens over the next five to ten years, parents will notice that it is getting difficult to find good public school teachers and easier to find good teachers at charters.
4. If there is a rapid move toward charter schools, I think that this exacerbates the problem of unfunded pensions for retired teachers. If public school enrollment levels off or declines, I believe that the share of the budget devoted to paying for pensions is bound to increase.
5. I suspect that, relative to public schools, on average charters undertake less left-wing indoctrination of students. This is possibly the main reason for conservatives and libertarians to get excited about charter schools.
6. The political opponents of charters have to prevent them from getting started. Where I live, the opponents have succeeded. But once charters become entrenched, getting rid of them is quite difficult. See NYC.
Perhaps equally important:
if there are to be “grants” (appropriations from the US Treasury) to the several states and commonwealths, the amounts should be proportionate to the federal revenues extracted from the individuals and activities conducted within each of those jurisdictions.
Appropriate adjustments can be made for large interstate business enterprises which “do business” in several states, in accordance with the proportions of “business done.”
A few thoughts, point by point:
#1 “As I see it, the main advantage that charter schools have over public schools is fact that bad teachers will tend to be fired and bad charters schools will tend to be closed.”
This alone will be a deal-breaker for the more liberal states where the politicians answer to teacher unions. Reference Chicago’s superintendent of schools, who publicly said that the only “real” schools are the public schools, and did so when the teachers had thrown the students under the proverbial bus so they could walk out until they got more money.
#2: “Right now, many affluent parents are very attached to their public schools.”
Are there references you can site for this? This seems counter-intuitive, especially since the public school party line is that the affluent send their kids to private schools. And while anecdotal evidence isn’t particularly useful in any kind of study, this is counter to my experiences with schools. With the exception of parochial schools, the breakdown of public school vs. private school tends to mirror low income vs. high income.
To keep this from getting very long, 3-5 are also reasons why the teacher unions, and again the politicians that answer to them, will fight this tooth and nail. This debate is not about honing techniques and improving services through competition. It’s about protecting interests.
#6 is where it gets interesting. In my state, charter schools are entrenched, successful, and not even really challenged anymore. They serve to bridge certain gaps between public and private schools, mainly tuition costs. I know a few people who have chosen charter schools over public schools because they offer a better education and cost less than nearby private schools. These people would have difficult choices to make if this bridge did not exist. Many offer specialized educations, typically art or STEM. This is something I tend to disagree with. I think middle school is way to early to begin specializing in anything.
I’m skeptical about #5. I certainly could be wrong, but I see the kinds of people who start, run, and teach in charter schools as typically being idealists and altruists. Teach for America types, in other words. I don’t see those folks as being any less inclined to indoctrinate students than traditional, unionized, education-industrial complex types. In fact, they might be even more effective at it.
And even if I’m wrong, you’ve still got Conquest’s 2nd Law to deal with.
I agree with the tipping-point hypothesis: at the moment, tiger moms in rich school districts are the teacher unions’ best friends, and the main existential enemies of charter schools outside the teacher unions themselves. But if tiger moms start seeing kids from charters going to Ivies at higher rates than from their “ordinary” schools, they’ll flock en masse to charters.
I have had kids in local charter schools since 2002 for both K-8 and high school. The main reasons we switched and kept going are 2 & 5 in the list.
2. The schools push an advanced curriculum where state standards are the minimum. The accelerated math program allowed my sons to be 2 years ahead of their school district peers. In high school, the charter is structured to be an early college school so they can take on campus courses starting in 11th grade and get more than a year of college done before graduating.
5. Since the K-8 school was started by parents, the curriculum was also determined by parent committees with emphasis on core subjects leaving indoctrination out.
Two other reasons we moved: A. The charters are free from union influence, membership is not required and the schools don’t do payroll deductions for the union so getting teachers to join is difficult for them.
B. Our kids were able to get out of the sports and popularity based standard school experience and instead learn with like-minded friends in a smaller, more educational environment.
Thanks, Arnold for bringing these issues up.
#1 is extremely important, probably enough to justify considerable support for charters vs. public schools.
Another side benefit deserves mention: Charters shift the debate. No longer are public schools beyond reproach or criticism — whether one supports or opposes charters, one must now consider performance, safety, and other desiderata.
Perhaps charters are a kludge offering limited improvement, but they offer a seed which should be applauded and nurtured. Consider a parallel with political theory. Hobbes’ Leviathan argued for an absolute monarch, but in doing so undermined the theory of Divine Right. This proved a watershed moment for liberal thought, paving the way for Locke, Mill, and others.
What about tax credits for homeschooling families and/or homeschooling co-ops? Almost equal number of homeschooled students (1.5 million) as charter school students (1.8-2.0 million, depending on estimates). Conservatives, particularly religious ones, and libertarian-leaning independents are much more likely to enthusiastically support homeschooling than charter schools, imo. Also, the ability to use private homes for instruction cuts down tremendously on the costs and hassle of getting started in comparison to the construction and regulatory hassles of building a charter school campus.
http://a2zhomeschooling.com/thoughts_opinions_home_school/numbers_homeschooled_students/
“1. As I see it, the main advantage that charter schools have over public schools is fact that bad teachers will tend to be fired and bad charters schools will tend to be closed.”
My understanding is that this is quite wrong. Education Realist has posted quite a bit on material demonstrating that the relative success of charter schools can be explained almost entirely by their ability to kick out the most troublesome and disruptive students.
To the extent that US public schools are “failing” (once you control for demographics, you see they really aren’t), the problem is not “bad teachers” but bad students.
2. “Right now, many affluent parents are very attached to their public schools.”
Of course they are, considering how much they pay for their “good” public schools via the bid-up property values that price non-Asian minorities out of the neighborhoods.
3. “…good young teachers are likely to prefer working at charter schools.”
The same “good young teachers” are also fresh from their ed-school lefty propaganda, short of real-world experience, and thus likely to believe in all the “left-wing indoctrination”, thus undermining your point #5
5. “…less left-wing indoctrination…”
Beyond the point I made under #3 relative to this point, the more this becomes true, the more we can expect the government to oppose charter schools, a battle I expect they can and will win.
I also expect homeschooling to come under increasing restriction. While “Teddy’s Law” failed this time, I expect more like it to eventually be passed. I also expect Wisconsin v. Yoder to be overturned in our lifetimes. Left-wing indoctrination is only going to get worse, not better.
I say this nicely, because I’m a fan, but regardless of whether your predictions turn out correctly, the *reasons* for them are entirely wrong.
1. As Kevin C has pointed out, charters expel and suspend at very high rates: Chicago, New York, DC. They do so because students don’t have a legal right to attend a charter. In contrast, students have a legal right to attend their local public school, and expulsions are quite complicated legal matters. Moreover, the schools that suspend at a high rate are often almost entirely minority URM, so they aren’t bothered by disparate impact.
It’s also not true that bad charters close; charter advocates themselves are worried about this. It’s clear that parents often demand their charters be kept open, just as they do with public schools.
2. In fact, the recent CREDO report just demonstrated again that whites and Asians don’t do well in charters. One reason is that whites and Asians who go to charters are often going to suburban charters, which are often progressive (yeah, this puts paid to your 5). But no, charters don’t serve affluent parents well, unless they have kids who aren’t interested in a social life and want to grind all day. Then there are a few brainiac charters that have managed to form in highly diverse districts. But parents would much rather bring back tracking than go to those schools.
3. I’m not young, but I’m five years out of an elite ed school as a second career teacher. It’s more of a personality thing, but the majority for sure go to comprehensive schools. And many that start out at charters end up at traditionals.
4. Unlikely to be an issue because your predictions are wrong. Teachers, even at charters would often rather be in the pension system. Charters thus far have refused to accommodate, but over time, it will end up being a hiring issue.
5. Of all the many wrong things in this post, this is the wrongest. Like, totally, utterly wrong. The “no excuses charters” are a fragment of the overall. Most charters are run by progressive whites, blacks, or Hsipanics.
6. This is true, but not really because charters are popular. It’s just that anyone can start one, bleed off money, and then the schools start to suffer. Parents in affluent areas are furious about that.
Really, I’m surprised that someone who advocates the excellent Null Hypothesis in education would argue that charters themselves are superior.
What about federalism? If you do this at the national level, you’ll have national standards, and more centralization of education. Let the states experiment. If the evidence for charter schools mounts up, it should be possible to lobby for it in the states that currently resist.