The post What We’re Watching: Paul E. Peterson on Alaska’s Charter Schools appeared first on Education Next.
]]>On Thursday, Feb. 7, Education Next senior editor Paul E. Peterson spoke before the Alaska state legislature to present his findings from The Nation’s Charter Report Card, which ranked states by their charter school performance and found that Alaska had the top-performing charter sector in the United States. He presented to both Alaska’s House Education Committee and its Senate Education Committee.
“The Nation’s Charter Report Card: First-ever state ranking of charter student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress,” co-written with M. Danish Shakeel, is available now.
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]]>The post “Honestly Assess Your Strengths and Limitations” appeared first on Education Next.
]]>After serving as president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools since 2012, Nina Rees stepped down last month. Charter schools thrived on Rees’s watch but also became increasingly contentious. Given that, it seemed like a good time to check in with Rees and get her frank perspective, now that she’s newly freed from the responsibility of being the official voice of the charter sector. Before taking on the role of representing the nation’s nearly 8,000 charter schools, Rees served as the first head of innovation and improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Here’s what she had to say.
Rick Hess: So, Nina, how would you describe the state of charter schooling today?
Nina Rees: On the one hand, the charter school movement has serious momentum behind it: It is the only segment of the public school system that is growing, we’ve had multiple legislative victories at the state level in 2023, and CREDO’s most recent research shows our clear impact on student achievement up until the pandemic. The pandemic demonstrated the demand for greater options, and our sector certainly rose to meet that demand. On the other hand, since the pandemic, a lot has changed—leadership turnover in many of our schools, new schools built in communities that are not as familiar to the sector, and the general turnover in the teacher workforce make it hard to leverage the increased demand. The continued political forces of the establishment have also made it harder to expand at a rapid clip.
Hess: Can you say a bit more about the “political forces of the establishment”? Who do you have in mind, and how have they affected the pace of charter expansion?
Rees: People often point to teachers unions, and they’re definitely a driving force in the establishment, but school district administrators, elected school boards, and parents and taxpayers—whose home value is connected to their local school—are also part of the establishment to one degree or another. Schools are closely connected to communities, and community pride can make it hard to have honest discussions about how well schools are working and whether they’re working for all students or just some. Still, unions are powerful in education because they are closely connected with school districts. In the private sector, a conflict between a union and their employer resolves when both sides figure out how to get what they need while serving customers well. In the public education space, unions have figured out that administrators, elected officials, and community boosters are often the customers who matter most. As a result, students are rarely at the center of the equation, even though they should be the highest priority. While people support efforts to offer a great education in theory, most want this done without disrupting the system.
Hess: You’ve mentioned before that your personal experience with traditional public schooling helped shape your take on choice. Can you say a bit about that?
Rees: When my family moved to the U.S. in 1983, I started attending Blacksburg High School, the only high school in Blacksburg, Virginia. This school was part of the community in more ways than one. The town showed up to our football and basketball games, and everyone from the local garage owner to the college professor sent their child to this school. The community spirit was wonderful, but it also stifled any talk about choices. If you didn’t want to go to BHS, you had to move to another town. I don’t know that anyone will ever disrupt the way things are done in Blacksburg, but I do think that school choice advocates are naïve if we blame all our problems on unions.
Hess: It seems to me that the Biden administration has been somewhat hostile to charter schools, seeking to impose new restrictions, showing lukewarm support for federal charter funding, and not providing the kind of bully pulpit support that the Obama or Clinton administrations did. Is this a fair assessment? If so, what do you make of it?
Rees: The Biden team came to power in the midst of Covid, and much of their work has centered on responding to the pandemic and its aftermath, so some of the challenge is simply an issue of the administration not prioritizing innovation and choice. But it’s true that President Biden is the first president since the advent of charter schools to have risen to power with the strong support of the teachers unions—and his wife is a proud member of the National Education Association. This dynamic is new to our sector, since Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were not beholden to these unions in the same way. It’s worth pointing out that the president’s home state of Delaware has around two dozen charter schools, and Delaware’s current congressional delegation—all of whom are Democrats—support charter schools.
Hess: Charter schools are still very popular with African American, Latino, and centrist Democrats, but they’re increasingly unpopular with the kind of college-educated progressives who wield a lot of power in the Democratic party today. What has that meant for your efforts?
Rees: This is unfortunate because many of the white progressives who oppose charter schools have made choices to send their own children to great public or private schools. In terms of impact, it’s meant a greater sense of clarity around the need to engage Black, Latino, and centrist Democrats to make a more vocal case for charter schools. The Democratic party needs Black and Latino voters more than ever before, and this subset of the party should leverage that power by vocalizing their support for choice and charter schools more aggressively.
Hess: Meanwhile, in red states, we’ve seen a surge of Republican enthusiasm for universal voucher programs and Education Savings Account legislation. How has this affected charters there? Has this activity been good for charters or has it brought challenges?
Rees: In those states where the dollar amount of the ESA or voucher is higher than the per-pupil expenditures that follow students to charter schools, these programs can create an uneven playing field where charter schools are forced to compete for students while having access to fewer dollars—a situation most charter schools already face when competing with other public schools. In other communities, ESAs and vouchers will probably not have much impact on charters, unless our sector is not meeting the needs of the communities we serve. It’s also important to note that most of the legislators who push for ESAs are also supportive of charter school expansion. Our mission is to elevate the quality of public education—and in this respect, if we do our work well, no parent should want to send their child to a private school.
Hess: You have a better sense of this than I do, but it sure seems like charters are more controversial than they were a decade ago. Why is that?
Rees: Transformational change, especially in the public domain, is hard. In some ways, the controversy is a sign that our sector is having an impact. The controversy stems from demonstrating outcomes and drawing students and resources from school districts. Our public school system, as with any established system, was bound to respond to this.
Hess: How did the pandemic and the aftermath affect the charter sector?
Rees: The initial response by our sector was strong. We saw many schools pivot quickly to online learning and offer Chromebooks and internet access, as well as partner with local groups to offer meals and support for families. As a result, while district schools lost 1.3 million students in the 2021–22 school year, 240,000 families enrolled their children in charter schools. Post-pandemic, our sector is dealing with many of the same issues that other educators are dealing with—increased achievement gaps, mental health issues, and culture wars on top of general educator fatigue and leadership turnover. I believe that charter schools will weather this particular storm, as they are used to change and are nimbler and more entrepreneurial than their traditional district school counterparts.
Hess: What do we know about charter school performance today that we didn’t know a decade ago? And do we have a sense of how charter performance has changed over time?
Rees: Thanks to numerous widely respected studies by CREDO, we know that our schools often perform better than nearby public schools and that the more established networks have been able to perform better over time—especially in terms of meeting the needs of low-income students. With that said, our overall performance, compared with all public schools in a state, is still lagging. And while chartering in and of itself has outlasted other innovations in the field of education, we can’t point to many pedagogical innovations that have originated in our classrooms. Most of the innovations that charter schools have championed are in the management area and oriented around expanding the school day and school year, as well as staffing structures. Some believe that the marriage between the charter school movement and the accountability movement has stifled innovation because of a relentless focus on achievement, and there may be some truth to that. In other words, the singular focus on closing the achievement gap and getting students to and through college has forced many of our leaders to focus on tried and tested methods of teaching.
Hess: I’m struck by how candid that answer is. It seems remarkably open about the strengths and limitations of charters. I don’t feel like I encounter that kind of frankness too often. Do you think that’s something that the charter school community could do better on?
Rees: I think that’s something everyone in public policy can do better on, no matter the issue. It’s impossible to know where you have to improve unless you honestly assess your strengths and limitations. If charter advocates don’t push ourselves to address areas where we can improve, such as being more innovative in the classroom, ESAs and other forms of choice that allow for greater experimentation will take over. In fairness to the sector, asking charter schools to lead on innovation with students who are behind academically is a tough needle to thread. Some new approaches will work great, while others won’t produce the results we need. I would prefer that we carefully test and study new ideas before bringing them into classrooms with students who can’t afford to fall further behind.
Hess: When you started at the alliance, it seemed that the face of charter schooling was the “no excuses” charter schools. Today, those schools have backed away from many of their old practices, and they’re far less visible than they once were. How would you describe the face of charter schooling today?
Rees: The term “no excuses” may have been a popular term in some corners and with some philanthropies, but the sector has always been diverse in terms of its offerings. For instance, we’ve always had schools that are focused on overage and under-credited students or STEM, as well as culturally affirming schools. Ultimately, the parents and communities we serve need to be interested in sending their children to our schools, and schools that are focused on sending students to college are always going to be popular. Nationally, Classical Academies are certainly gaining momentum, in part for political reasons and in part because many parents are drawn to the idea of rigorous, time-tested academics.
Hess: Last question: If you had one piece of advice to offer the charter community as it negotiates the political environment of 2024 and beyond, what would it be?
Rees: Building coalitions will be really important for the charter sector in 2024 and beyond. Every sector that works with government has felt the ground shift in recent years. It’s hard to know if old friends will remain friends and where your new friends and opponents might emerge. When I started doing this work, school choice was part of a larger effort to revitalize communities through tax breaks for businesses, incentives for homeownership, etc. I would band with other sectors that are aligned with our mission so that charter schools are seen as a critical part of a larger effort to bolster our economy, end poverty, and broaden access to the American dream.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.
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]]>The post In Memoriam: Linda Brown appeared first on Education Next.
]]>Some three decades ago, teaching in one of the first Massachusetts charter schools, I met Linda Brown.
I had no idea who this woman was who had walked into my classroom. But she was intense. She looked at every piece of academic work in front of my students. She examined what they were producing—and I mean examined. She asked them if what we were giving them was challenging enough, if we were asking them to work hard enough, if they were determined to go to college and give everything they did their very best.
She was unlike any other visitor to our school. Those who patted us on our heads and said some form of “Dear, you are doing such good work with these children.” These children: As though simply seeing these children in seats with books in their hands made their hearts go aflutter.
Linda founded and led Building Excellent Schools, a national non-profit that identified, selected, and trained aspiring founders of high-achieving charter schools across the country. I joined Linda as BES’s fellowship director and chief academic officer.
Linda Brown died in the afternoon on Christmas day at 81.
Linda changed my life. But that is not what is most important. Linda changed tens of thousands of lives: the hundreds of school founders she trained, pushed, and supported; the tens of thousands of students they in turn have educated and are educating still.
Linda and I called each other “work spouses.” Together we upheld the vision and the values of Building Excellent Schools and its fellowship. We loved each other as deeply as two spouses can. We challenged each other, respected each other, understood each other, and worked hard beside each other to ensure that students had the very best schools. Those schools had to pass the test—good enough not for those kids but for our own.
Linda knew that for such schools to exist—successful schools, serious schools, inspiring schools—she had to find, train, push, support, and connect the very best people to lead them. People with humility and hunger, intensity and energy. Smart people. Ambitious people. People who would listen and learn and do the work. With her “fierce urgency of now,” Linda found those people who made it happen and still are.
For hundreds of successful charter school leaders, Linda was the founder of founders—their switchboard operator, connecting one leader to the next, passing from one to the next what works.
Whatever it takes. Urgency. Academic achievement, before all else.
I wanted to ask former fellows what Linda meant to them. But where would I start? Andy Boy, Ravi Gupta, Charlie Friedman, Hrag Hamalian, Shara Hegde, Jane Henzerling, Mia Howard, Linda Lentz, Lester Long, Scott McCue, Julia Myerson, Lagra Newman, Bill Spirer, Yutaka Tamura, Natasha Trivers, Roblin Webb, Shantelle Wright? What of those who weren’t fellows but who were Linda’s founders, nonetheless—individuals to whom she gave so much, and for whom she carried enduring pride and love: Jon Clark, Mike Goldstein, John King, Emily Lawson, Dana Lehman, Doug Lemov, Brett Peiser, Josh Zoia. The list is long.
“I could not get anyone to listen to me, or believe in me, until Linda,” Malka Borrego of Equitas Academy in Los Angeles told me. “Linda put her stake in my game, and she knew that I could do it. On so many occasions, she said to me and to others, ‘I believe in Malka,’ and that made everything else possible. Now, in 2023, I see five beautiful school buildings in my community. It’s not the buildings that are important in themselves but what they represent, a $75 million dollar investment in education in my community that had never seen any investment and had been totally overlooked. Linda made all of that possible. Linda is the reason why a whole generation of people are being treated differently.”
“She had looked at a teacher from western Massachusetts, who had never set foot in Houston or Texas, and thought, she can open this school,” Kayleigh Colombero of Étoile Academy in Houston recalled. “And we did it—two stubborn and motivated women, using every bit of our five-foot bodies to will a good school into existence for children in Houston. Like Shackleton in the Antarctic, Linda fostered collective determination to beat all odds in all those she led.”
“Linda is often referred to as the Yoda of public education, routinely in reference to the concept that she is the smallest, mightiest being you’ve ever met,” David Singer of University Prep in Denver said. “She could kick your ass with a simple look; she could will positive change with a phone call; she could bring the room down with a tiny “BUDDA – BOOP” and the smacking of her hands… She may have been short and slightly tilted forward, but she stood taller and straighter than the greatest redwood searching for light in a CA forest. When I was in the BES Fellowship in 2009, each morning would start with an email from Ms. Brown (usually quite early). It was like an alarm bell ringing to go out into the world and find a way to do the impossible. Things are hard; keep going. You need a pick me up; here’s a love note. You think this is difficult today? Wait until you’re ultimately responsible for the well-being of someone else’s children. Keep going, you can do this, you will do this. It’s been almost 15 years since my first phone call with our tiny Jedi Master, and I can assure you that even if I’m not thinking of Ms. Brown at a particular moment, her influence is steering my brain and my heart. Is this good enough for our kids? Are you operating with urgency? What is the bar of excellence? Does every child receive the greeting at the front door that brings out their light? That tells them very directly that they matter—in this sacred place that is school they are seen, they are heard, they are valued—they are loved.”
“If you absorbed the Fellowship, then you learned and you were given so much. Linda gave me the opportunity to do this work, to carry that urgency,” Ros DaCruz of RISE Prep in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, explained. “Whenever I talked to Linda, she always asked, ‘What can I do? What do you need?’ And then she had 14 emails in my inbox in 5 minutes with all of those things.”
I love you, Linda Brown. You proved what was possible in American public education. Again, and again, and again.
Sue Walsh is the former fellowship director and chief academic officer of Building Excellent Schools. Please visit this site for additional recollections of Linda Brown from former BES fellows.
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]]>The post Defending Harvard’s Ranking of State Charter School Performance appeared first on Education Next.
]]>In November 2023 we, at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, released a new state-by-state ranking of the performance of charter school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card. The ranking is based on charter students’ scores on 24 NAEP tests of math and reading administered between 2009 and 2019. Ours is the first ranking of charter student performance on the same set of tests administered to samples of all students throughout the United States.
For the most part, the ranking has been well received. The head of the KIPP Foundation, the nation’s largest charter school network, says in one news report that the results “confirm our experience.” The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools comments that “the new data are ‘sobering in many respects,’ showing that charter schools in many places have ‘room to grow.’” And, of course, the ranking has been received enthusiastically by policymakers in states like Alaska, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma—all of which came in at the top end of the standings. Even middle- to bottom-ranking states have not chosen to criticize the ranking procedures—though one charter-school advocate who did not like the below-average placement of his home state, objected on the rather bizarre grounds that “[o]nly a randomly selected sample of … students take the NAEP test,” a denial of the reliability of an approach regularly employed by the U.S. Census Bureau.
But in a recent blog post, Matthew Ladner, executive editor of NextSteps, a publication of the school-choice advocacy group Step Up For Students, has expressed his own doubts about our findings. He says we failed to adjust for the share of charter students who are in special education programs or are English Language Learners, we relied on information that fluctuates from one test to the next, and that charter students should have been ranked on state proficiency tests instead of the NAEP.
These criticisms either are wrong, mislead, or fail to take into account what was said in the technical version of the paper published in the Journal of School Choice.
We take particular exception to the erroneous claims that we “were unable to control for the rates of special education and English Language Learner status” on the NAEP. Those charges, if true, would be serious. But as reported in the abridged version that appeared in Education Next, scores are adjusted “to take into account the age of the test-taker, parents’ education levels, gender, ethnicity, English proficiency, disability status, eligibility for free and reduced school lunch, student-reported access to books and computers at home, and location [emphasis added].” In the unabridged version, we inform readers that eligibility for special education and English Language Learner status is ascertained by NAEP from school administrative records.
Ladner misleads when he notes that math scores of Texas 8th grade charter students tested by NAEP fluctuated substantially between 2017 and 2019. Although that is certainly correct, it is the very reason we use information from multiple tests over an extended period. As we say in the technical paper, “By combining results from 24 tests over an 11-year period, the chances of obtaining reliable results are greatly enhanced.”
Ladner argues it would be preferable to use data from the Stanford Education Data Archives, or SEDA, a source that provides student performance on every state’s proficiency tests. We in fact report a ranking obtained from the SEDA data, which is calculated in a manner comparable to the one used to construct the PEPG ranking, in Table A.11 in the appendix to the paper available in the Journal of School Choice. That ranking correlates with the PEPG ranking at the 0.7 level, which suggests the two data sources yield broadly similar results. As we discuss in our article, however, the NAEP tests are preferable because they allow for a ranking of students’ scores on the same set of tests. Ranking states based on SEDA data requires the strong assumption that state tests may all be placed on the same scale. Also, state proficiency tests are high-stakes tests used to evaluate both charter schools and their teachers, providing incentives to manipulate test results. NAEP is a low-stakes test that is not used for student, teacher, or school evaluations. Lastly, SEDA excludes over 32 percent of all charter schools from its sample. By contrast, PEPG’s NAEP sample includes over 99 percent of all charter student observations in NAEP.
But Ladner would have us use the problematic SEDA test data because SEDA reports changes in student performance in each school district and charter school from one year to the next. That requires yet another assumption: that there is no change in the composition of a school cohort from one year to the next, a particularly strong assumption for a school of choice.
As we concluded in both versions of the paper, “the PEPG rankings are not the last word on charter-school quality.” We are hopeful that assessments of charter school quality will continue to improve in the coming years. But we can only make progress if criticism is accurate and straightforward.
Paul E. Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard University, director of its Program on Education Policy and Governance, and senior editor at Education Next. M. Danish Shakeel is professor and the director of the E. G. West Centre for Education Policy at the University of Buckingham, U.K.
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]]>The post Innovation in the Heartland appeared first on Education Next.
]]>Students are returning to school this year on the heels of another summer of sobering headlines about the nation’s lackluster academic recovery. With multiple indicators showing stalled learning recovery and education policy experts sounding alarm bells at Congressional hearings, we must finally treat lagging educational outcomes as a pressing national emergency.
National trends mirror statewide trends in Indiana, where high school juniors take the SAT as their required high school state assessment. This assessment provides us with the most comprehensive snapshot of college readiness in a state that continues to see college entry rates decline.
Unfortunately, statewide SAT college-readiness rates decreased from spring 2022 to spring 2023 for Hoosier students. Most of the 11 school districts in Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, also saw declines. This was true for the county’s largest school district, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), where only seven Black students in high schools managed directly by the district demonstrated college-readiness on the SAT. Seven.
But there is good news: Students in Indianapolis charter schools drove outsized college-readiness gains that bucked both local and statewide trends.
There are two types of charter schools in Indianapolis. Independent charter schools operate completely separate from school districts, and innovation charter schools operate in partnership with IPS. Both types of charter schools have operational autonomy and are governed by nonprofit boards. Most of them are authorized by the mayor of Indianapolis.
The gains for Indianapolis students who attend innovation charter high schools were particularly impressive. As a group, innovation charter schools increased their college-readiness rates by 10.6 percentage points from the previous year, from 20.8 percent to 31.4 percent. These schools now surpass state averages for virtually every student group, including Black, Latino, and special education students. Students attending innovation charter high schools are over seven times more likely to demonstrate college-readiness than their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.
For Black students, the top 10 public high schools within IPS boundaries are charter schools. Black students in innovation charter high schools demonstrate college-readiness at nine times the rate of their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.
For Latino students, the top seven public high schools within IPS boundaries are charter schools. Latino students in innovation charter high schools demonstrate college-readiness at over four times the rate of their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.
What conditions are driving these significant results? The common factor is autonomy. Indianapolis charter school leaders can make building-level decisions that are tailored to their unique school communities. School founders, with support from The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based education nonprofit, have taken advantage of this autonomy successfully to create school models that not only spark students’ passions but provide instruction and support that meet their students’ needs.
The result is a diverse tapestry of quality high school options that rivals any city in the country. For example, high schoolers interested in early college can enroll at BELIEVE Circle City, which offers dual enrollment coursework as early as a student’s freshman year.
Purdue Polytechnic High School has two Indianapolis campuses that offer STEM-focused, project-based learning with opportunities for students to explore their passions independently and gain acceptance into one of Indiana’s flagship universities.
Herron and Herron-Riverside High Schools offer a rigorous classical, liberal arts curriculum that produces some of the highest college-readiness rates in the entire state.
Adults who previously dropped out of high school can enroll in one of several campuses of The Excel Center, a nationally acclaimed network of adult charter high schools that operate in partnership with Goodwill.
The demand for these innovative school models continues to grow. Last school year, charter high schools served 60% of public-school students within IPS boundaries.
If you had told an Indianapolis civic leader 20 years ago that many of Indiana’s best and most innovative high schools would be located in the city’s urban core, you likely would have been laughed out of the room. But that is now the reality within one of our state’s most impoverished communities.
Indianapolis has learned that the traditional factory model approach to high school education is unable to meet the needs of our 21st Century students. Our charter school sector has accelerated the move away from comprehensive high schools that pass students along in the name of efficiency toward a more nimble and relevant high school experience that unlocks the potential of everyone.
As our country takes the time to look back at these first few years of post-pandemic learning, it will be very clear which communities decided to grow innovative solutions that drive student achievement and those that decided to maintain the status quo.
Reversing learning loss will require a focus on growing proven methods that create better outcomes for students. Indianapolis serves as one model for how that can happen, at scale, for students who need it the most.
Brandon Brown is CEO of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis.
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]]>The post Oklahoma’s Approval of America’s First-Ever Religious Charter School Is Cause for Celebration appeared first on Education Next.
]]>On June 5, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board voted, 3-2, to approve the initial application of the first religious charter school in the nation, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. The vote clears the way for the Board to authorize the school, which is a joint effort of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa that will serve students throughout the state as early as fall 2024. The application makes clear that St. Isidore will be a Catholic school, top to bottom. The dioceses do not hide the ball: Their goal is to bring a high-quality, authentically Catholic, education to students who would otherwise lack access to it in a large rural state with many underserved communities.
The board’s decision marks a pivotal moment in the history of American education. All states require charter schools to be “nonsectarian” in their operations, and most—including Oklahoma—also prohibit them from being operated by, or affiliated with, a religious organization. In December 2022, however, the Oklahoma attorney general, John O’Connor, issued an opinion letter concluding that these prohibitions likely violate the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. O’Connor’s letter cleared the way for St. Isidore’s application in January 2023. (Since then, O’Connor’s successor as attorney general, Gentner Drummond, has withdrawn O’Connor’s letter and made clear that he opposes St. Isidore’s application on state constitutional grounds.)
As events have unfolded in Oklahoma, a diverse array of advocates and reformers have expressed concerns about the possibility of religious charter schools. Immediately after the board’s decision approving the application, for example, Rachel Laser, the president of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, vowed to take legal action when the school is authorized, and Nina Rees, the president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, issued a press release stating, “All charter schools are public schools, and as such must be non-sectarian….We stand ready to support charter school advocates … as they fight to preserve the public nature of these unique schools.” In the months leading up to the board’s decision, many parental choice advocates also urged caution, arguing that private-school-choice devices like education savings accounts (“ESAs”) are a better fit for religious schools because charter school regulations will threaten the schools’ autonomy and religious freedom. Some also have warned that states might close all of their charter schools, displacing millions of students, rather than authorize religious charter schools. Others are concerned about the “virtual” nature of the school, named after the patron saint of the Internet.
I have been involved from the outset with the efforts to secure approval for St. Isidore. My view is that the arguments against the school, and against religious charter schools generally, fall short. Groups like Americans United have argued for well over a century that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits state funds from flowing to religious schools or supporting religious education. But the Supreme Court made clear over two decades ago, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, that’s simply not the case. In Zelman, the court upheld a modest voucher program for low-income students in Cleveland despite the fact that more than 96 percent of the students in the program attended religious schools. In the decades since, the Court has repeatedly made clear that the First Amendment not only permits the government to extend public benefits, including public funds, to religious schools but also prohibits it from funding secular, but not religious, ones. As Attorney General O’Connor summarized in his opinion letter, “The state cannot engage private organizations to ‘promote a diversity of educational choices,’ … and then decide that any kind of religion is the wrong kind of diversity. That’s not how the First Amendment works.”
As for the argument that charter schools must be secular because state laws call them “public” schools, that’s also not how the First Amendment works. Traditional public schools may not embrace religion because they are government schools. They are operated and controlled by school districts, which are government entities. But charter schools are not government schools. Charter laws enlist private organizations to run schools, and give them substantial operational autonomy in order to foster educational pluralism. And, charter schools, like private schools participating in parental choice programs, are schools of choice. The only students who will be educated by St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School are students whose families choose the school for them.
Both the question whether charter schools may be religious—and the question whether states must permit them to be religious—turn on whether charter schools are private actors or government actors (in constitutional-law speak, whether they are, for federal constitutional purposes, “state actors”). The federal constitution only binds private actors in the very rare circumstance when they are effectively acting as government agents—when their actions so closely controlled by the government that their actions are effectively the government’s own. If charter schools are state actors, then the Establishment Clause (extended to apply to the state governments by the 14th Amendment) may justify forbidding the schools from being religious. But if the schools are not state actors, then these prohibitions represent unconstitutional religious discrimination. The state action question is immensely complicated, and one that the Supreme Court may address within the next year. But in my view, in most states—and certainly in Oklahoma—charter schools are not government actors. They are private actors, and because they are, the state is bound by the Free Exercise Clause’s nondiscrimination mandate to permit them to be religious. (See “Supreme Court Opens a Path to Religious Charter Schools,” features, Spring 2023.)
Whether private school choice devices like ESAs are a better fit than charter status for religious schools is a prudential question, not a legal one. I find the dramatic expansion of private-school choice over the past few years to be a cause for great celebration. Where available, private school choice may, indeed, be a better fit for many religious schools. It certainly is the path of least resistance. But that reality does not relieve states of their obligation to conform their charter laws to the Free Exercise Clause. To be sure, charter schools currently are regulated more than schools participating in private-school-choice programs, but that reality also does not justify religious discrimination. Moreover, contrary to the apparent assumptions of many parental choice advocates, while ESAs and other private-school-choice programs may be lightly regulated at present, these devices are not anti-regulation invincibility shields. Advocates must remain vigilant against the risk of regulatory creep (as happened in the charter context). And religious organizations should have the same right to weigh the costs and benefits of participating in a parental choice or charter school program as secular ones do.
The remote possibility that some states might choose to close secular charter schools rather than to authorize religious ones also falls short as a justification for prohibiting religious charter schools. If anything, that argument highlights the discriminatory nature of current charter laws. In states without private school choice, charter school laws put religious organizations to what the Supreme Court has made clear is an unconstitutional test: The choice between receiving a public benefit and adhering to their faith commitments.
As for the virtual nature of the new school, Oklahoma already has several online secular charter schools. All things being equal, students at in-person, brick-and-mortar schools have generally outperformed students at virtual schools on standardized tests, though online education is increasingly common in many contexts. However, the Sooner State’s embrace of online secular charter schools, including for-profit ones, when St. Isidore will be operated by two dioceses with a proven track record operating academically strong schools, suggests that the opposition here is really not about the online education, but about the religion.
Charter schools have, over the past thirty-plus years, expanded educational opportunities, especially for the kids who need them most, and have injected much-needed educational pluralism into the landscape of American education. But one kind of pluralism—religious pluralism—has been off the table. Religious schools, which have been among the most important sources of educational pluralism, and which have served with distinctions millions of students—including many low-income students who otherwise would lack access to a high-quality education—have long been told they cannot be charter schools. The recent developments in Oklahoma finally give religious schools a new answer, opening the door to an authentically pluralistic charter school landscape. That is a good thing.
Nicole Stelle Garnett is John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and associate dean for external engagement at Notre Dame Law School. She is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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]]>There’s much talk about the need to tackle college costs, student debt, and the quality of career and technical education. The Greater Educational Opportunities (GEO) Foundation launched in 1998 with an eye to tackling these challenges. GEO charter schools seek to have K-12 students graduate with college credentials. They serve nearly 4,000 primarily low-income students in Indiana and Louisiana. Because the GEO model seems especially relevant today, I thought it’d be useful to chat with the president and founder, Kevin Teasley. Here’s what he had to say.
Hess: Can you share a bit about the work of GEO Academies?
Teasley: GEO Academies are powered by the GEO Foundation, a nonprofit launched in 1998 from my living room with a mission to empower low-income families with real school choice. We advocate for all forms of choice, and when Indiana passed a charter law in 2001, we started one of the state’s first charters. Today, we have eight schools: seven charters and one statewide private online voucher-redeeming school. Collectively, we will serve nearly 4,000 students in Baton Rouge, La., and Indianapolis and Gary, Ind., this year.
Hess: What prompted you to launch this effort?
Teasley: I attended public schools, but when I worked with D.C. and L.A. schools in my role at a public policy think tank, the schools I saw looked nothing like the ones I attended. Most families who could leave these schools did, and those who couldn’t afford to go elsewhere were stuck. That’s not right. So, I got into the school choice movement in 1989, led California’s Prop 174 campaign in 1993, started the American Education Reform Foundation (now American Federation for Children) in 1996, and have started private scholarship programs after that. I started the GEO Foundation in 1998 to get back to grassroots organizing. In 2001, I got tired of just talking about choice and started a school in Indianapolis. Then invitations came in from Gary and Louisiana.
Hess: What’s distinctive about GEO schools?
Teasley: We practice school choice on steroids. We focus on student choices and help them get as much education out of the public dollar as possible. By that I mean we help our students earn K-14 and K-16 results with K-12 dollars. We cover 100 percent of college costs, too. We do this because most of the students we serve are first-generation college students. They need more than talk about the importance of college; they need to experience it. They need to be shown they are college capable. Our goal is not for them to simply go to college: We want them to complete college. We help them do that before graduating from our high schools, so they can lean on our academic and social supports. Our teachers check in with our students on their academic work, and our counselors keep track of their social and emotional supports as well as credits earned toward college degrees.
Hess: That sounds complicated. How does that work practically—combining your high school program with colleges?
Teasley: We have developed relationships with and provide transportation to various universities and community colleges to allow our students to take real college courses on their campuses. We provide a summer bridge/orientation program to introduce our students to all things college. Our students earn the right to take college courses by passing college-entrance exams. If they fail the test, we remediate. If they pass, they start taking courses that add up to a degree and count for high school credit.
Hess: So, like AP classes, is this mostly a matter of acquiring credits?
Teasley: Our college-immersion program offers dual degrees, not just dual credits. Students earn real college credits and degrees on real college campuses while in our high schools. One student in the program earned a full bachelor’s, and now, others are following in her footsteps. We believe placing our students on real college campuses is 50 percent of the value of our program: Students will learn time management, self-discipline, as well as how to work with others who are different from them. They learn how to navigate the college campus, the registrar’s office, college professors, and more. They learn all this with the program’s daily support.
Hess: What are some of the results to date?
Teasley: Our graduation rates are higher than the local, traditional high school—in the case of the 21st Century Charter School, their graduation rate is higher by 30 points (91 percent versus Gary Community School Corporation’s 62 percent) and beats the state average of 87 percent. Additionally, our college and career readiness rating, as calculated by the Indiana Department of Education, is 50 points higher than the local school (89 percent versus Gary Community School Corporation’s 38 percent)—again beating the state average (68 percent). More rigor, more experience, and better results from an urban population that is 100 percent minority and low-income. Our students are earning associate degrees, and now, we are starting to see students push themselves to earn bachelor’s degrees. One student did it in 2017, and we have two on track to do it in 2024: Abram at Purdue University Northwest (PNW) and Khaya at Indiana University Northwest (IUN), and five more are on track to achieve this goal by 2025.
Hess: How much does this cost, for students and to operate the schools?
Teasley: That’s the beautiful thing about our program. The students pay nothing. Taxpayers pay no more, either. The nation wants it, and our K-16 model provides free college already. We cover college tuition, textbooks, transportation, and social and academic supports. It cost our Gary school more than $500,000 last year, and that was a steal we budgeted for. In return for that $500,000, our students earned real college credits from more than 40 teachers on college campuses. If I had to employ all those teachers, it would have cost more than $3 million. And that doesn’t include the cost of the classroom space, furniture, maintenance, utilities, technology, etc. Taking advantage of what the taxpayers already support, we provide our students more with less expense. Through this stewardship, both the students and the taxpayers receive what they want.
Hess: What are the biggest challenges with this model?
Teasley: The challenges are primarily transportation and adult traditional thought. We are air traffic controllers managing students and their schedules—making sure they land in the right classrooms on multiple college campuses and earning degrees. This is a paradigm shift for many, so we constantly fight high school traditions. The general public thinks high school students are too young to be on college campuses. But our students manage quite well, and many start as early as 9th grade on college campuses. (Khaya started when he was 11. He has been accepted to IUN as a degree-track student and will earn a full bachelor’s by the age of 15.) Indeed, many professors have no idea the age of our students. To replicate what we do, school leaders need complete buy-in. High schools are launching pads, not destinations. If you want to replicate our model, you have to start by putting the students’ interests first and do whatever is necessary to meet the students’ needs. Need a Chinese class for one of your students? Look for one at the colleges. Need a welding class? Look at the career centers. Don’t build your own. If it exists already, use it. And in most cases, it already exists.
Hess: Do you expect to see GEO get bigger?
Teasley: Expansion is already happening. We are currently working to go statewide in Indiana and Louisiana. I believe we will soon be serving more than 10,000 students in each state.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.
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]]>Great Hearts Academy launched, in 2001, with 130 students. Today, it operates 33 classical K-12 schools serving more than 25,000 students in Arizona and Texas. At a time when there’s a lot of interest in classic liberal arts school models, and with Great Hearts seeking to expand its offerings via pre-K and online offerings, it seemed like a good time to chat about their work with CEO Jay Heiler, who’s been on the board of Great Hearts since its founding and spent more than a decade as chair of the Arizona Charter Schools Association. Here’s what he had to say.
Hess: So, Jay, what is a Great Hearts Academy? What makes it distinctive?
Heiler: Great Hearts academies are grounded in an ethos of education as formation of the virtuous human person, not only in knowledge and intellect but also of the heart and character. We long and educate for a more philosophical, humane, and just society, but we consider this work as apart from the controversies of the day or the continuous political and polemical theater. Our school model features a rich liberal arts curriculum and a culture that fosters friendship, marked by a common love of the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Hess: Can you talk a bit about what it takes to make that kind of curricular model work?
Heiler: Great Hearts academy life is simple to understand in terms of what it includes and what it excludes. It includes the Great Books, the best of what has been thought and written for millennia, Socratic pedagogy grounded in conversation, and a culture of friendship. It excludes screen time and pop culture, on the supposition that students are now immersed in an overabundance of those things outside of the school day.
Hess: Some critics have argued that Great Hearts’ value-based, classical model isn’t a good fit for all students. What’s your response to such critiques?
Heiler: Great Hearts is an emphatically anti-elitist organization because its central assertion is that the best education for some is the best education for all, and our purpose is to make it accessible to all, so that all might have the chance to lead a great life and do things that matter to them and our society. Classical education begins and succeeds by grounding itself in timeless things that do not change. It disabuses young minds from the common tendency to see one’s own time as safely evolved beyond the perils and failures of earlier times. It refutes the cult of novelty. It opens the mind by engaging with centuries of human thought and conversation, disaster and triumph, error and recovery, insight and inspiration. For these reasons, we believe every child would benefit from a Great Hearts classical education, and we go to work every day to reach as many families as possible.
Hess: How did Great Hearts get started?
Heiler: In the early years of charter schools, the prevailing vision was “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Our original insight was that this is not how education would be reformed, accounting for goodwill or the market. So we wanted to take the best possible education and replicate and then scale it. We began 21 years ago with 130 students in a leased church classroom building, improved for occupancy via some borrowed funds, with grades 7 through 9.
Hess: What’s your network look like today?
Heiler: Since our founding, Great Hearts has grown to become the leading provider of classical education in the U.S., with more than 25,000 K-12 students in public, nonsectarian charter schools and now a new preschool offering as well: Young Hearts. We have accomplished this as a nonprofit organization. We currently operate in Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth. Amid the travails of the pandemic, we also launched Great Hearts Nova, our innovation-centric division which includes fully online charter academies in Arizona and Texas and microschools.
Hess: Does Great Hearts choose its students? Is there an application?
Heiler: Great Hearts does not select our students; the parents of our students select Great Hearts. We are bound by law to enroll students on a first-come basis and hold a lottery when oversubscribed—which we do annually. There are no admission barriers, and we do our best to keep up with the demand for seats.
Hess: Do students pay tuition to attend?
Heiler: The schools are tuition-free, open-enrollment public charter schools. We run the model efficiently so we can continue to increase teacher compensation under tight financial circumstances. Neither Arizona nor Texas has been among the higher-funding states, but both have been improving on that front. Per-pupil funding in Arizona now amounts to $9,100 and a bit more in Texas. We fund academy operations out of these amounts and raise money philanthropically to support enrichment activities, teacher support, capital costs, and development.
Hess: Can you talk a bit about your involvement in the burgeoning world of virtual learning and microschooling?
Heiler: Part of our response to the pandemic was to very quickly create a fully online K-8 Great Hearts charter academy, in both Texas and Arizona. We will also bring forth an online high school as soon as we have the model ready. Great Hearts Online offers the same curriculum as our built academies, and families will choose either “live instruction” or “flexible week.” We have been mindful that previous online offerings have, for the most part, been of low academic quality. So, to that end, our online charters are subject to the same state accountability frameworks as our brick-and-mortar schools, and we expect them to perform just as well.
Hess: What’s ahead for Great Hearts?
Heiler: In the fall of 2023, we will open Great Hearts Harveston in Baton Rouge, La. The following fall, we will begin work in Florida with an academy in Jacksonville, Fla. We will also continue to grow Great Hearts Online in Arizona and Texas. In Arizona, we will also launch private schools with church communities, serving predominantly low-income families under the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account law. Additionally, we will begin replication of our Young Hearts preschools. Overall, within five years, we hope to be serving significantly more students in our existing regions and introduce in new regions of the U.S. with our traditional public charter schools, through our online offering, and—where permitted by law—in private schools.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.
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]]>New Schools for Baton Rouge was started back in 2012 to launch and support new schools in Louisiana’s capital. To date, the organization has opened 21 schools, and their enrollment comprises 25% of all public school enrollment in Baton Rouge. Ken Campbell took over as CEO last year, after a background that includes a long stint as president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and nearly a decade in the Louisiana Department of Education—where he was director of charter schools for several years. At a time of exploding educational choice, sharp political tensions, and debates about the future of charter schooling, I was curious to hear Ken’s thoughts after his many years navigating these currents in a state that has long been at the center. Here’s what he had to say.
Hess: So, what is New Schools for Baton Rouge?
Campbell: New Schools for Baton Rouge (NSBR) is an organization made up of the city’s top civic leaders that is focused on ensuring that every child in Baton Rouge has access to an excellent education. To deliver on this mission, we help launch new, high-performing schools that allow students to reach the highest levels of achievement. We are also focused on attracting and retaining top teaching talent, supporting community partners who help children excel in school, and making it easier for parents to choose great schools.
Hess: What prompted you to take on the role?
Campbell: I had the privilege of collaborating with my good friend Chris Meyer as he launched NSBR 10 years ago and served on the organization’s board of directors for several years. When the opportunity to lead the organization as CEO opened, it felt like my career was coming full circle. My first civilian job after leaving the army in 1991 was with a civic-led nonprofit working with district leaders to improve public schools in Washington, D.C. Obviously, this was at a time when people were just beginning to identify and talk about the achievement gap and before the introduction of charter schools and many other reforms that we now take for granted.
Hess: What are the biggest challenges you’re seeing as we emerge from the pandemic?
Campbell: As we emerge from the pandemic, three challenges are top of mind for me.
First is the challenge of chronic absenteeism and truancy. Second, we appear to be witnessing more disruptive student behavior since the pandemic. While we’re responding to these incidents as they occur, we are struggling to identify root causes and implement proactive solutions. Third, I’m seriously worried about teachers leaving the classroom. There are increased levels of frustration and exhaustion among educators because they are not being given the proper tools to deal with the challenges that have arisen since heading back to in-person instruction. I don’t believe school and state leaders were prepared for the aftereffects of the pandemic.
Hess: Can you talk a bit more about the role of parents and their impact?
Campbell: All parents, regardless of their income level, should have a say in where and how their children are educated. The schools that we open give poor families the right to choose the education that fits their child best—many for the first time. Over time, we see parents becoming increasingly sophisticated choosers and informed school partners. In Jeff Bezos’ 2017 letter to Amazon shareholders, he said, “One thing I love about customers is that they are divinely discontent. Their expectations are never static—they go up.” I feel this is exactly what’s happening with parents in Baton Rouge. Schools are finding that they have to be responsive to the increasingly high expectations from our families.
Hess: There’s a lot of political conflict around charters right now. How does that affect your work?
Campbell: Charter schools have enjoyed a long run of bipartisan support through multiple administrations. So, the effort last spring to make funding from the U.S. Department of Education for charter growth and expansion more difficult to obtain came as something of a surprise. Charter schools remain one of our best tools for strengthening educational options for children, and for the first time in more than two decades, it appeared that politics would trump good education policy. Fortunately, a broad coalition of charter supporters stepped in and saved charter start-up funding, albeit with more cumbersome rules and regulations.
It is important to remember that the federal government has not always played a role in fueling charter growth. In the early days, it was actually private philanthropy that decided investing in charter schools was a better bet than continued investment in a traditional public school system. Over time, the federal government’s CSP program made start-up funding for charter schools readily available, and private philanthropy moved to fill other voids, like facilities. I hope that private philanthropy is ready to step back in whenever and wherever charter funding is threatened.
Hess: What are some of the ways you keep diverse stakeholders together in New Schools?
Campbell: One way that we’ve done this is through our community impact grant program. Recognizing that community partner organizations are often best positioned to provide students and schools with vital support services, we are making investments in more than a dozen organizations this year. We’re investing in programs working directly with schools or individual families to provide tutoring and academic support, arts and enrichment, self-esteem and increased self-confidence, counseling, etc.
Hess: You said the charter community includes both those committed to traditional schools and those focused on more innovative models. How do you balance this tension?
Campbell: There are several distinct and passionate school communities that all reside under the charter school banner. One is made up of individuals and organizations focused exclusively on creating “better public schools.” We have another set of charter operators who believe our kids need different and more innovative approaches to produce better results and see the autonomy afforded to charter schools as an opportunity to fundamentally change how our children experience school. Because we prioritize the urgency of getting as many children as possible into better schools, we invest significantly more time and energy into growing the “better public schools’’ models. I’m not convinced; however, some of our biggest lessons and breakthroughs about teaching and learning won’t come from the smaller, more innovative schools.
Hess: What’s one key lesson you’ve learned during your three decades in education?
Campbell: That we don’t value teachers enough. We actually encourage our best and brightest young minds to pursue any profession other than teaching, and when young people pursue degrees in education, we push them through university teacher preparation programs mired in outdated thinking. Novice teachers who make it to the classroom are then subject to ineffective leadership and inconsistent coaching and development. And, we pay our teachers a fraction of what they deserve. If we truly care about improving educational outcomes for students, redesigning the teaching profession from top to bottom should be one of our most urgent priorities.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.
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]]>Often, education policy involves difficult tradeoffs such as between accountability and community, with the best intentions of technocrats clashing with the needs of students in real world schools.
As a case in point, teacher-race matching is perhaps the hottest topic in education reform. Advocates assert that African American students benefit from exposure to African American teachers. Major corporate philanthropies have followed up by pouring millions into expanding the African American teacher pipeline. The hypothesis that animates these claims is sensible: Teachers perform better when they understand and connect with their students and parents, and these sentiments are, on average, stronger between students and teachers of color. Numerous studies find modest positive statistical relationships with test scores, attendance, discipline, graduation, and college attendance when African American students have same race teachers.
As we detail, a small but growing literature likewise suggests positive outcomes from diverse school leadership: That is, Black school leaders are plausibly better situated to understand the needs of students of color, to and to govern the school in a way that maximizes their odds of success, in part by hiring and retaining the right teachers. That’s why we were concerned to observe that stringent charter authorizing regulations appear to erect disproportionate barriers to entry for people of color who aspire to operate charters. In a study published recently, we find even more cause for alarm. Charter regulations not only disparately effect market entry, but market exit.
Our new paper specifically probes the disparate impact imposed by default closure laws. These statutes require that charter schools close if they fail to meet certain guarantees of performance, “unless there are extenuating circumstances.” Put differently, regulators rather than parents voting with their feet make decisions about the lifecycle of a charter school.
Importantly, the tripwires that induce closure vary widely across states. Some states mandate closure based on failure to meet performance expectations specified in the charter contract, which can be tailored to the specific student body being served, while other states mandate closure based on failure to attain generalized proficiency standards. Missouri, for example, mandates closure if there is “Clear evidence of underperformance…in three of the last four school years,” and underperformance is based on universal performance standards.
Overall, from the 24 states through which we received charter petitions, we observe that in settings with default closure, 53.2% of charters founded by African Americans close compared to 20.4% founded by others. In settings without default closure, those numbers decrease to 18.9% and 11.5%, respectively.
Utilizing national data, we observe that there are also profoundly disparate outcomes depending on student demographics. In settings with default closure, 38.5% of majority Black schools close compared to 14.6% of non-majority Black schools. In settings without default closure, majority Black charter schools are slightly less likely to close than other charters (23.5% versus 26.2%). While we cannot conclude that these differences are the causal effect of default closure statutes, the magnitude of difference across states certainly suggest that there are sometimes stark differences between how bureaucrats and parents evaluate school quality in the education quasi-marketplace.
Tension between families and bureaucrats are not new to debates about how to best regulate charter schools. As early as 2004, Rick Hess warned that families and bureaucrats would inevitably clash over the conditions that should culminate in charter closure. Competing visions for charter schools, including most fundamentally decisions surrounding which schools should open or close, remain a wedge issue between influential school choice organizations. The Center for Education Reform cautions that default closure may “close a charter school that offers students and parents something they would otherwise lack at neighboring public schools” and “may discourage schools from attempting serve the hardest-to-serve students in ways that may be quite needful, but that wouldn’t necessarily translate to test score gains.” The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, on the other hand, includes it as part of its model law.
Proponents of the regulatory model of charter schooling often couch their arguments in deference to empirical insight, citing, for example, an Ohio study that concluded that students in charters shuttered by the default closure statute academically benefited, as measured by standardized tests. Still, our study highlights the sobering reality that education policy always involves tradeoffs. Whatever test score improvements are yielded by default closure laws, they appear to come disproportionately at the expense of agency in communities of color. Those who favor the regulatory rather than the market model of chartering (i.e. parents voting with their feet) have staked out an admirable goal—improving test scores—but might enhance their legitimacy and standing with charter communities if they practice greater humility about who the regulatory model empowers and disempowers. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers’ recent pledge to “center communities” is simply not consistent with advocacy that tends to privilege large, predictable charter management organizations over mom-and-pop charters in communities, creating racial inequities in market entry and exit.
One potential solution to alleviate the inequitable outcomes that we observe would be to amend default closure laws to only use student growth as a performance metric and not student achievement, the latter of which often says more about the type of student a school serves than the school itself. But even that approach could incidentally punish schools with traditionally underserved or at-risk students, as research suggests that academic growth tends to be slower in students with social and emotional challenges.
The recent and dramatic expansion of school choice across the country raises urgent questions about the role of charters in an ecosystem with diverse publicly funded school options. We don’t profess to have the answers, but our empirical work should serve as a cautionary tale.
Martha Bradley-Dorsey is a research associate at University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform. Ian Kingsbury is senior fellow at the Educational Freedom Institute. Robert Maranto is Endowed Chair in Leadership at University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform.
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