Ignore the other colors. Red is all there is.
The debate over charter schools is ongoing and seemingly endless, and you may have noticed the volume ratcheting up a bit this week because it is School Choice Week. But while charter schools are being discussed, one question that is rarely addressed is this: why are we offered mostly just one flavor of charter schools?
There are a variety of features that are attached to the modern version of the charter school model as if they inescapably a fundamental part of the model, and yet there is no real reason that some of these characteristics have to be part of charter schooling. Some of these features vary from state to state, depending on the local laws, but for the most part, these charter traits that deserve examination.
Private ownership and operation
The current corporate charter model assumes that the charter school must be privately owned and privately operated, even though it is publicly financed. Why? Why aren’t charter schools owned by the communities that pay for them? And why aren’t they run by a locally elected board chosen from among the taxpayers who pay for them?
Lack of transparency
While some states are starting to pull up the curtain, many still allow charter boards to conduct their business behind closed doors and to keep their financial actions locked away from sight. Why is this a necessary feature of charter schools? Is there something about being able to conduct business behind a veil of secrecy that allows charters to better educate students?
Failure to provide certain programs
Charter schools often operate without support programs for students with some special needs. Why should charters not offer the complete range of programs that we expect from any other school?
Less qualified staff
Many states allow charter schools to operate outside of the regulations covering qualifications for teaching staff, allowing charter schools to hire people who have minimal—or none-at-all—training. Charters may compensate for this by using a strict and restricting classroom instruction. Why should this particular pedagogical model be a preferred feature of charter schools?
Little oversight or accountability
The prevailing model for charter schools offers little oversight. Charters must answer to their authorizers, but in most states those authorizers lose money if they shut down the charter school. This is a tremendous incentive to keep those charters open, no mater what. Some states have state level charter boards, but these are mostly involved in nurturing and promoting charters, not holding them accountable.
For the moment, let’s not argue the wisdom of these features. Let’s ask, instead, why these features are the predominant ones in the charter industry. A charter defining feature is supposed to be freedom from some of the onerous regulations that besiege public schools; why is it always the same regulations that are being dodged?
The answer, I’d argue, is that the current modern charter model is less about finding a model that provides better education, or even a model that provides robust choice, and more about finding a model that makes it easier to operate a school as a business. And we have somehow accepted that the only real model for a charter alternative to a traditional public school is to let charters be run as businesses. The modern charter model is still built around harnessing market forces while letting a visionary CEO operate his charter business flexibly without having to deal with the government, the union, or the public.
Again, for the moment let’s not argue the pros or cons of a business model for schools and just ask— why is that virtually the only model being offered.
It doesn’t have to be. Albert Shanker’s vision for charter schools was nothing like it; Shanker imagined a school-within-a-school that allowed teachers the freedom to operate a school, experimenting and innovating with structure and pedagogy. In Andrea Gabor’s After the Education Wars, we can read about how Deborah Meier and others successfully launched innovative schools within schools in New York City, as well as other innovative reforms based on education models rather than business ones.
Little Tidioute, Pennsylvania, faced the loss of their community school by the larger school district to which they belonged, so they formed a charter school, locally owned and operated, overseen by a local board of trustees (whose meeting announcements, agendas, and minutes are posted on line). It doesn’t follow the corporate charter model; it’s an unusual example of a charter school.
Why do we not see more exceptions? Where are the charters that are locally owned and operated, that are completely transparent in their dealings? Where are the charters being run by experienced teachers?
The idea of a charter school ought to be a flexible one, allowing for literally hundreds of models. Yet we are repeatedly offered just one flavor, with a focus on making money for someone, operating with minimal oversight, and serving only a particular portion of the student population. This open flexibility may be what business people feel they need to operate, but it has opened the door to an extraordinary range of abuses and failures, on top of charter schools that simply fold (sometimes mid-year) or never even open.
Meanwhile, the debate about charter schools often focuses on features (like profit-making) that do not actually have to be features of charters. It’s like arguing about whether or not there should be cars because red cars look scary when they go fast—there are other car colors besides red. The charter industry has pushed the equivalent of the idea that all cars must be red. But if the charter movement is really about innovation and choice and education, then let’s talk about some models that don’t start with the assumption that schools should function as private profit-making businesses.
