Charter Schools Are Not the Silver Bullet
Talk K-12 education for more than five minutes, and inevitably, the conversation turns to charter schools—those publicly funded, privately administered institutions that now educate more than 2 million American children. Parents wonder if they are better than the neighborhood public school. Politicians tout them as a silver-bullet solution to the education crisis. Education technology companies promote them for their profit potential. Opponents of organized labor like the Walton family embrace them for their ability to crush teachers unions.
But amid all the buzz, the single most important question is being ignored: Are charter schools living up to their original mission as experimental schools pioneering better education outcomes and reducing segregation? That was the vision of the late American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker when he proposed charters a quarter-century ago -- and according to new data, it looks like those objectives are not being realized.
In recent years, major studies suggest that, on the whole, charter schools are producing worse educational achievement results than traditional public schools. For example, a landmark study from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes discovered that while 17 percent of charter schools "provide superior education opportunities for their students," a whopping "37 percent deliver learning results that are significantly worse than their students would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools." Likewise, the National Center for Education Statistics found that charter school students performed significantly worse on academic assessments than their peers in traditional public schools.
These numbers might be a bit less alarming if charters were at least making sure to "not be school(s) where all the advantaged kids or all the white kids or any other group is segregated," as Shanker envisioned. According to a new report from the National Education Policy Center, however, charters "tend to be more racially segregated than traditional public schools"—and in lots of places, they seem to be openly hostile to children who are poor, who are from minority communities or who have special education needs.
A smattering of headlines from across the country tells that story. "Nashville Charter Schools Blasted Over Racial Imbalance," blared a recent headline in The Tennessean. "Charter Schools Face Discrimination Complaints," read The Chronicle of Philanthropy. "Colorado Charter Schools Enroll Fewer With Needs," screamed The Denver Post. "Charter Schools Enrolling Low Number of Poor Students," reported The Miami Herald. The list goes on and on.
Some apologists might claim that for all their faults, charter schools are the solution to our education challenges because they are saving school districts money during tough economic times. But in many places, that's not even close to true. Indeed, as evidence from Ohio to New Mexico to Tennessee to Florida to Pennsylvania suggests, charter schools are often more expensive than their counterparts, meaning taxpayers are paying a premium to underwrite a segregated system now producing worse academic results than traditional public schools.
Does this all mean that charter schools are inherently bad? Of course not—there are some terrific charter schools out there. However, the data do suggest that charter schools are not a systemic answer to America's education crisis. In many cases, in fact, they make the crisis worse, not only exacerbating inherent inequalities, but also distracting attention from the real ills plaguing the education system—ills rooted in economic inequality and anemic school budgets.
Such challenges aren't sexy, simple or politically convenient—but they are the true problems at the heart of our education system. No matter how many charter schools pop up, and no matter how often education "reform" activists pretend they are a cure-all, those problems will continue harming kids unless they are addressed.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.
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The problem came in when one neighborhood was wealthier than another, but both within the same tax district. If the tax dollars were divided between the 2 schools based on numbers of students, then the wealthier neighborhood is going to complain. If the tax dollars were divided based on the wealth of the neighborhood the school was in, then the poorer poorer neighborhood would complain. Best for the entire tax district to be of the same class, no complaints... And that's exactly the way most areas did it, until the 50's.
It was okay so long as the school districts had plenty of rural countryside between them, little communication between them, and little commuting between them. If the people in these communities kept their blinders on, did not talk to the community on the other side of the farmland, nobody even knew enough to complain. -- But, cities grew, suburbs were butted up against each other, different schools could now know what was going on in a neighboring school. Complaints of inequality, it got so bad the feds came in, told states to fix the problem. Now we had larger tax districts, state apportionment, and the problems we now have.
There is a strong movement to get things back to where money is segregated again, so that "private, free enterprise" will solve it so monied families can afford to educate their kids and stay on control of the establishments they were already running. positioned there by birthright as opposed to merit. Lower families would be destined to stay low, and some families would have no education at all, the lowest of the low will be mortally sacrificed like a beast of burden that is of no value to the owner anymore.
And that's just on the money.
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There is the other angle on the contents of what is being taught in the schools. The conservative right does not want their kids "indoctrinated with those damnable, liberal public school values forced on them by the government. Yet they feel fully justified in "indoctrinating" the children of the liberal left with their own values, to respect that money stays with money, do not even think about trying to rise above your born station in life.
And the voter will be okay with this as long as they are on the correct side of the dividing line. It is another reason some want to eliminate certain groups from voting.
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I'm afraid the real silver bullet is the unfortunate mass reduction of the population, be it an epidemic, a nuclear war, a global warming disaster. Something to kill off 90% of the population, then the small bit that are left can retreat to their segregated corners and rebuild their closed communities, out of sight, out of mind.
A way to take the existing people to find a way to "co-exist", is not going to happen until black and white lay down together to make babies, same with rich and poor, muslim and christian, educated and uneducated, liberal and conservative. It is going to take a Great Mixing to finally get opposing sides to get along for the sake of their mixed children. This was the only way that white folk could finally unite Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Swedish, and other white nationalities, they had to mix.