My civic issues blog is going to cover the extremely sexy topic of school choice. Okay, okay, not such a glamorous topic, but this issue is something that’s extremely important to me. I personally have benefitted from school choice, having attended a charter school when I was younger, and I credit it with setting me on the academic trajectory I’m on today. However, I must acknowledge that this does make me biased, so I will strive to separate my opinions from the facts.
So, what exactly is school choice? As defined by EdChoice.org, school choice “allows public education funds to follow students to the schools or services that best fit their needs—whether that’s to a public school, private school, charter school, home school or any other learning environment parents choose for their kids”. Essentially, school choice allows parents to make the educational decisions that they deem to be right for their child. The controversy surrounding school choice stems from the complexity of the issue and how multi-faceted the problem is. Understanding some of the underlying issues at play elucidates why school choice is so controversial: arguments over the separation of church and state, debates over the power of the free market, socio-economic inequity within education, racism within the education system, and discrimination towards people with disabilities in education. These are all sensitive topics, each with their own complexities and nuances.
I’m going to start off by diving into what exactly a charter school is. On their website, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools defines charter schools as “independently-operated public schools that have the freedom to design classrooms that meet their students’ needs. All charter schools operate under a contract with a charter school authorizer – usually a nonprofit organization, government agency, or university – that holds them accountable to the high standards outlined in their ‘charter’”. Charter schools are public schools, as far as they receive funds from the government the same as traditional public schools do. In fact, NPR published a statistic that charter schools typically receive 30% fewer funds than traditional public schools per student. Charter schools operate separately from the standard school district system and do not fall under the authority of the public-school board (with some exceptions). As such, charter schools do not charge tuition to attend nor are they allowed to have a religious affiliation.
According to NPR, the first charter school was opened in 1992 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The goal of charter schools is to “encourage innovation” and act as “pedagogical laboratories that would push new ways to teach, even if it was disruptive”. Charter schools can operate on the grounds of their charter or a legal document between the school entity and their authorizer that gives the school the autonomy to run a public school. This charter must be reviewed and renewed on a period to period basis, as determined by the state, by the authorizer. As education is regulated on the state level, this is where the picture begins to get a bit blurry. Each state that allows charter schools, 43 states to be exact, decide who can act as an authorizing agency for charter schools, with the only stipulation being that they must be a non-profit agency. Typically, these authorizers are state governments or government agencies such as local school boards, and sometimes universities. However, this means that the legal structure under which charter schools operate varies from state to state; for the purposes of this blog post I will be keeping my statements as generalized as possible.
Charter schools are held to the same regulatory laws and educational standards as traditional public schools; as such they are required to have students participate in standardized testing and accept all students, regardless of different special needs statuses like being an ESL student. Many of the arguments against charter schools stem from the notion that they fail to meet academic standards or that they circumvent rules stating that they must accept all students and deny entry to students with special needs. While I am certain that this may have happened before, as in any industry there will always be bad actors who try to bend the rules, the role of the charter school authorizer is to monitor such accusations, and when the school’s charter comes up for renewal to determine whether there is enough evidence to substantiate the closure of the charter school. To me, the operation of these individual schools is indicative of the authorizer’s lack of monitoring rather than a systemic issue with charter schools as a whole.
The other biggest argument against charter schools is that they siphon away money from already struggling traditional public schools. The way that most charter schools receive funding is that when a student opts into attending a charter school, the school district that they would have attended allots their per-student cost of education from their budget, and it is then given to the charter school so they can educate the student. In struggling school districts, where the majority of charter schools pop up, people argue that this only makes the state of traditional public schools worse, as it decreases their budget. However, a common rebuttal to this argument is that the funds are meant to educate the students and should, therefore, follow the student wherever they go. This allows students in struggling schools the opportunity to seek better education and ensure that they are receiving the education they need to strive in today’s society. While it would be nice to have traditional public schools that are all perfect and can educate students to that standard that their parents want, the fact is that many aren’t and can’t. Education reform takes time, and while it happens, I think that alternative options such as charter schools should be available.
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/03/01/511446388/just-what-is-a-charter-school-anyway
https://www.publiccharters.org/about-charter-schools/charter-school-faq
https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/1076-school-vouchers-pros-and-cons
https://www.procon.org/headline.php?headlineID=005354