Charter Schools: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Part II

Charter Schools are a big topic today in the educational reform debate. Both Rham Emanual, Chicago’s new mayor, and his appointed Chicago Public Schools CEO, Jean-Claude Brizzard, support charter schools and school choice. There are 48 charter schools in CPS today. In Diane Ravitch’s book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, she takes a close look at charter schools. They are public schools under private management. They must follow only some of the rules and regulations that regular public schools do and they receive federal funding. When charter schools were originally proposed they were to be run by innovative teachers that would develop ways to help children failing in the traditional school system. It would provide an alternate choice for struggling students. Schools would be tailored to their needs and produce better results. This sounds like a great idea. However, this is not how many charter schools are functioning now. Today charter schools are run using a business model where competition and return on investments are expected.

Janelle Scott, an educational researcher, discusses the presence of venture philanthropy in charter schools. Philanthropies such as The Walton Family Foundation (Wal-Mart) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are putting their money into charter schools. However, they are not just giving their money to schools they expect to see increased student achievement and to have a say in the policies of the school. Charter schools need the money for their school so they will do what is expected of them to get it. Since test scores are what determines student achievement today enrollment may be adjusted so that charter schools accept the most desirable students. Scott states in her article, The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy, “There is evidence that some charter schools have disproportionately low enrollments of special education students, English language learners, and boys, populations generally known to perform more poorly on standardized assessments.” When charter schools selectively enroll students they ultimately leave a larger portion of high-needs students to be taught in the regular public schools. This undoubtedly affects the test scores of the public schools. Charter schools boast of high test scores and greater student achievement but many are not educating the same students as public schools. It is difficult to make a true comparison.

Scott also explains that some charter schools have a “high attrition rate”. Children who are struggling or not conforming to the rules of the charter school are either leaving or being expelled. Ravitch discussed the study of a KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) charter school that found “60 percent of the students who started in fifth grade were gone by the end of eighth grade. The students who quit tended to be lower-performing students”. When these children leave they will return to regular public school classrooms. In the end it seems that charter school are not schools developing new innovative ways to help struggling students. Instead they are attracting the most motivated and successful students and discarding the rest.

All children have the right to a good education, and although public schools are not unflawed they accept all children and work to provide them with a quality education. Are charter schools really doing what they were intended to, servicing children who were struggling in the traditional school system? Are they providing choices in education that high poverty children would not normally receive? It seems as if the competition between charter and public schools and the focus on producing increased student achievement has created an unsuccessful attempt at school reform that may in the end only hurt the students involved.

Mrs. J