The Interesting Case Of Charter Schools
Two interesting bits of information were reported on March 27. The Hartford Courant reported that the legislature’s education committee had removed a moratorium on charter school expansion. And The New Haven Register reported that New Haven’s Board of Education president Carlos Torre had accepted a position on Achievement First’s Board of Directors only days after Torre had helped squash a new partnership between Achievement First and the New Haven Public Schools.
Quite a banner day for charter supporters, I’d say.
I know a lot of teachers who work in charter schools, and I have done observations of teachers in charter schools. There are good, hard-working teachers in charters just like there are everywhere.
My concerns and objections are not with teachers or even individual charter schools. Teachers are teachers and several studies have demonstrated that across the nation charter schools perform on average about as well as public schools.
My concerns are with issues of funding, working conditions for teachers, and the treatment of students.
In the case of Elm City Imagine, the charter that was prevented from opening in New Haven, $700 plus in-kind services would have followed each child to the new school. That means for every student drawn away from one of the local public schools to this new charter, well over $1000 would have been siphoned off from local budgets. I say “well over $1000†because the non-descript phrase “in-kind services†sounds like a no cost measure, but in-kind services most definitely cost something.
Here in Mansfield, our board of education just submitted a budget that calls for a 4% increase—and still eliminates two instructional consultants. What would our budget look like if we lost a couple hundred students plus $700 each, and on top of that had to pay for in-kind services? It would be devastating, assuredly.
Then there’s the issue of teachers’ rights and working conditions. As reported by The New York Times on April 6, because teachers in charters do not enjoy the same collectively bargained rights as teachers in public schools, they are often greatly overworked, to the point that they suffer extreme stress and, ultimately, leave at a much higher rate than in public schools. The Times reported that the turnover rate at the Success Academies in the city was around 50%. Success officials offered a much lower number of 17%, but even that is almost triple the average in New York’s public schools.
Most importantly is the issue of students. Ultimately, for many charter supporters, this is the only issue. They have no qualms about the diversion of public funds or the (mis)treatment of teachers. It’s about “high-quality public school options and great schools for every child,†as the Courant quoted Achievement First’s CEO Dacia Toll.
And this is perhaps the most interesting issue of all.
The day after the Courant reported on the abandonment of the moratorium, the paper ran an op-ed from a parent describing how wonderful “the Achievement First family†has been for her two sons and her daughter. Another couple of days later came an announcement from Urban Prep Academy in Chicago that for the sixth straight year it had placed 100 percent of its seniors into college.
Sounds nice, but I have to ask, At what cost and at whose expense?
What happens to the students who fail out of a charter or get kicked out for disciplinary reasons? Take for instance the Urban Prep Academy in Chicago that is so boastful of its graduation and college placement rates. After the third year that Urban Prep made this claim, The Chicago Tribune ran an article that showed that approximately half of the students who began as freshmen at Urban Prep were no longer at the school four years later. That means that the 85 college-bound young men in that senior class were the lucky ones from a group that actually had a graduation rate of more like 50%—well below the national average that now tops 80% for all high school seniors and 70% for African-Americans.
Worse still may be the disciplinary methods employed in many charter schools. The April 6 New York Times article reported a suspension rate of 23% for charters, well above the city average of 4%. On March 8, The Hartford Courant reported that suspension rates across the state were down to a low of 12.3%—but not in charter schools, where rates of suspension were staggeringly high, as much as 59% at one New Haven charter school.
As I wrote to a high school classmate of mine recently, at best, charters are a short term solution for handful of students, but they worsen an already difficult situation and divide constituencies that should have shared interests.
Isn’t it interesting that they continue to make headway into the state?
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