On Charter Schools

Here is an explainer about charter schools I wrote in 2019. I think it still mostly holds up. But if I was going to write something similar today I would probably find a place to talk about anti-poverty policies being a tool to increase education. But outside of anti-poverty programs we still need to run our school system optimally. So this piece focuses exclusively on the education side.

Charter schools educate just 7% of students in the United States. Yet, their existence seemingly dominates 100% of education conversations. These debates on charter schools are often ugly and personal — they almost always lack nuance. Teachers, parents, students, and policy makers alike often bring their own biases and anecdotal experiences into these disputes, often distorting the reality of the situation.

Historically, charter school support has had blurred partisan lines. Both the Bush and Obama administration had policies supporting their growth and expansion. Today, charter schools still have overwhelming support from Republican legislators. However, Democrat support is largely drawn on racial lines. White Democrats overwhelmingly view charter schools unfavorably, while the majority of Black and Hispanic Democrats have a favorable view. Notably, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to attend charter schools.

Still, over a fifth of Americans report being unfamiliar with charter schools. And many of those who claim they are familiar, are often unable to articulate the basics of charter school law. This purpose of this article is to first clarify these misconceptions and second to provide policy recommendations on charter schools with an emphasis on closing the achievement gap and bolstering American public education as a whole.

What are Charter Schools?

Charter schools are public schools. This is possibly the most vital part of the conversation. It is 100% free to attend a charter school and they are funded with public money just like any other public school. The easiest way to explain them simply is that: charter schools are publicly funded and privately run. Charters may be founded by teachers, parents, school leaders, or other community advocates. To found a charter school, an operator must submit a contract to a local district or state detailing the plans for their school. If the government agency approves the contract, they can begin the process of founding their school.

Currently, 7 states do not allow charter schools at all: Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia. States that do approve charter schools have vastly different rules for funding, allotted number of charter schools, access to facilities, length of contracts, and many other important details. You can find the complete guide to charter school laws by state here.

Innovation

While they receive public money, charter schools are often exempt from other state laws of the operators choosing, allowing them to innovate outside of traditional school norms. Charter schools have used this autonomy to lengthen the school day or year, increase the role of the parent, develop new curricula, create unique pay structures for teachers, and other classroom and school culture innovations.

Proponents claim that this innovation allows schools to act as laboratories and gives leaders more information on how to effectively run a school. Others have looked to charter schools to lead us out of what they see as an outdated school system. Evidently, many successful charter school leaders attribute their success to innovative approaches. However, evidence is scant that they’ve been able to spread their approaches outside their school walls.

The most contentious innovation in charter schools is the lack of unions or other restrictions that protect teachers from being fired. Charter schools have an advantage of being able to rid themselves more easily of ineffective teachers. Unions, who often protect all teachers, see charter schools as diametrically opposed to their mission. These differences in stances may help explain the racial division on charter schools among democrats. Teachers unions are overwhelmingly white, while charter schools students are majority students of color. Charter schools also have more teachers of color, further exacerbating the racial division.

Funding

Charter school funding may be even more divisive than unionization. While charter school funding varies by state, most states use similar methods. Charter schools are typically funded on a per-pupil metric based on spending in the district. For example, in Philadelphia, where the district spends roughly $19,000 per student annually, a charter school’s funding would be: the amount of students multiplied by $19,000. A charter school in Philadelphia with 100 students would receive $1.9 million in funding. Some states grant charter schools a percentage of the per capita spending rather than the full amount.

Though they often receive equal funding per capita, charter schools often have less access to usage of government facilities and thus operate on a tighter budget. This lack of facilities helps explain the discrepancy in pay for charter teachers and non-charter public school teachers. Only a few states provide equitable access to government buildings for charter schools.

Within this overall funding structure lies the most pervasive argument against charter schools, they take money away from traditional neighborhood schools. Sure, per capita funding remains the same at the school but their economies of scale are reduced and their overhead costs remain the same. While students also leave a school for other reasons such as moving homes or attending magnet schools, charter schools are the leading cause of decreasing enrollment in district schools.

Charter school proponents are quick to point out that those district schools are losing funding because parents are choosing to send their child to a school they believe is a better fit. Furthermore, while many researchers have sought to show that charter schools hurt district schools, the research remains inconclusive. A 2017 study in New York shows that district schools actually saw an increase in test scores after a charter school opened nearby. On the other hand, cities like Detroit have seen almost no impact at all.

The Real Facts

Both sides of the charter school debates are often backed up by theory. Proponents claim that they spur competition and lift all boats. Opponents claim that it hurts the traditional public schools around them by stealing money. Neither claim is substantially backed by evidence.

However, our debates don’t need to be based on economic theory. Charter schools have been around since 1992. We have empirical evidence. The most comprehensive study to date on charter schools came out of Stanford in 2013. They compared charter schools to schools with similar demographics in the same area. This is what they found:

Some charter schools are doing substantially better than their traditional counterparts. Others are worse and most are performing nearly the same. Because so many of the high growth schools were immensely outperforming other schools in the area, on average charter school kids score higher on math tests than similar kids in traditional schools. Reading averages were almost exactly the same.

That’s the facts. Holistically, charter schools aren’t bringing down public schools or bringing them up. They aren’t performing worse and they don’t do much better. But that’s not the story many in education are telling.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, wrote an op-ed for the Huffington Post falsely claiming that charter schools were bringing down public education and that charter school students were performing worse in reading than in traditional public schools. The lead researcher at Stanford later published his own rebuttal adding that Weingarten had lied about the findings from their study.

It is worth noting that charter school success, like charter school law, varies drastically by state. The same Stanford study found that the average charter school student in Nevada acquired the equivalent of over 100 days less of learning in math and reading. While the average charter school student in DC acquired the equivalent of an extra 102 days in math and 72 days in reading. These numbers are truly baffling. New York, Texas, and Louisiana charter school students also saw massive gains compared to traditional public school students, while charter school students in Arizona, Arkansas, Oregon and Ohio suffered.

Within states, individual charter schools also vary widely in achievement. Some charter schools appear to have a winning formula where students are consistently going to college and achieving on grade level. Others, should have never been granted charters in the first place, as ill-prepared leaders attempt to run a school with limited experience, harming students in the process.

Still, even the successful schools have rightful criticisms. Too many charter schools rely on an overly punitive approach to keep students on track. The most notorious of which is Success Academies, a charter school network in New York that serves over 17,000 students. Stories of screaming teachers and seemingly impossible to follow rules have escaped the school walls. Success insists that these are isolated incidents rather than sweeping examples of culture.

On the other hand, over 90% of students at Success score on grade level in both reading and math. The schools serve 95% students of color. While many on the outside criticize Success Academy for the intense expectations they have for students, 14,000 students remain on their waitlist, as their parents desperately look for better school options than their neighborhood school provides.

Many other prosperous charter schools use similar models of Success Academy. This risks the notion that low-income students of color can only be educated well in a certain way. Charter schools have autonomy and they can also use this autonomy to lead on issues such as student voice and restorative justice. This is evident with KIPP, another high performing charter network that used to rely on strict discipline and zero tolerance policies. Many KIPP schools have since switched to a focus on restorative justice. Despite their cultural shift, KIPP remains one of the highest performing networks across the country and may operate as a model on how to teach students with high expectations and understanding.

Where We Go from Here

There are too many high performing charter schools to rip students away from them. The solution is absolutely not a banning of all charter schools. But charter schools themselves are not the solution either. We have evidence of what is working at the school and state level and good policy should work to emulate it. Below are 5 policy recommendations to improve the current charter system to reduce the achievement gap and raise educational attainment in America.

Ban all for-profit charter schools and networks — Nobody should be making a profit off of educating our children. Schools are not businesses. Any profit a school makes is money not being spent in the classroom. Furthermore, for-profit charter schools perform worse than non-profit schools and traditional schools.

Expand accountability for charter schools — Charter schools sign contracts with states that almost always include performance goals. Charter schools that fail to meet their goals and continuously underperform are failing students should have their charter revoked and be closed in a way that is best for the community. There is no reason for a charter school to exist in a neighborhood where other schools are consistently better educating students.

Charter school takeovers — There are district schools that have been failing students for generations. While unions and policymakers assure parents that they will turn-around their failing neighborhood schools, students are continually being failed year after year after year, until it is too late for them to get a good education. A 2010 study by The Department of Education examined 1,047 turnaround elementary schools. Over the course of their multi year study, only 47 were able to show substantial improvements in students reading and math abilities. The results were even more grim for higher grade levels.

Successful school turnaround efforts are rare and shutting down neighborhood schools is incredibly politically unpopular. Still, schools can be taken over by charter schools without closing down and still giving families access to their neighborhood school. The New Orleans Charter restart model included 19 charter school takeovers. In order to take over a school, charter school networks had to show a history of rigorous success. All schools that were taken over were in the bottom 5% of the state. By the next year, 13 out of 19 schools had improved and 5 out of 19 were performing in the top 33% in reading or math.

States and districts need to take action instead of letting entire neighborhoods be ravished by the failing school that we provide for them. By letting charter schools takeover, schools will have room to innovate outside of union contracts. There is evidence that this room for innovation works, and states should be making evidence based decisions for their students.

Fully fund charter schools — Whether it is less funding per capita or lack of access to facilities, in almost every state charter schools are operating on smaller budgets than traditional public schools. Many charter school proponents use this lack of funding to hurt charter schools and bolster their movement. But the students attending these schools are the ones really getting hurt.

These funding discrepancies lead to teacher pay discrepancies. Charter school teachers are more likely to be teachers of color, but are also paid less on average. There is overwhelming evidence that teachers of color have positive effects on their students. By fully funding charter schools, they can raise teacher pay and increase teacher retention and better serve their students. Ultimately, charter schools are here to stay, and anyone who claims to care about the education of all students should insist we fully fund all public schools.

Expand what works — Charter schools are supposed to be innovation factories but there winning models are not widespread enough. This is partially because many anti-charter educators do not want to believe that some charter schools are having massive success. However, there does seem to be consistency in what is working in the highest performing schools. The best schools use consistent discipline in language which keeps student expectations consistent throughout the school. They set high goals for students and put the proper interventions in place to achieve them. They have a focus on data and educating the whole student. Many even include high expectations for parents and guardians.

Charter schools applicants with a focus on these evidence-based practices should be more likely to be approved. Furthermore, states should work with charter schools to ensure that they do not become overly punitive and focus on restorative justice and student voice.

Quelling the Debate

Charter school debates need not be so ferocious. We should all care about students enough to let the evidence speak more than our personal biases and experiences. Among, the charter school debate is the overarching controversy on school choice. The facts are this, rich parents will always have the resources to choose the best school for their kids. On the other hand, low-income families do not typically have the resources to move. Banning charter schools outright means legally forcing hundreds of thousands of low-income families to send their kids to a failing school. Any charter school opponent needs to grapple with this reality.

However, as noted previously, charter school proponents that claim they are the savior to American education need to look more honestly at the research. Charter schools have existed for nearly three decades and we are still facing similar problems as before. With huge variances in charter outcomes across states and schools themselves, it’s easy to cherry pick data to fit the narrative you want. But our students deserve better than twisted data and political lies. The fact is that charter schools are here to stay, and it’s our duty to ensure they serve students to the best of their ability.