David Anthony of Raise Your Hand Texas on charter schools and accountability
Dr. David Anthony is CEO of Raise Your Hand Texas, a statewide organization that bills itself as a non-profit education advocacy group. You can read more about the organization at this website. Anthony also once served as superintendent of the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District.
He and I exchanged emails last week about SB 2, the measure by GOP Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston to increase charter schools. We also discussed some issues at play in the Legislature over school accountability. Here is our exchange:
GOP State Sen. Dan Patrick, chair of the Texas Senate Education Committee, wants to expand the number of charter schools in Texas, including through lifting the current cap on the number of charters the state can authorize. What’s wrong with that aim?
Raise Your Hand Texas is supportive of better choices for students within the public school area. However, more does not necessarily mean better.
Charter school campuses are rated academically unacceptable at nearly twice the rate of traditional public schools (11.2% v. 5.9%). Let’s put strong oversight in place, and improve the process for revoking failing charters which can currently drag on for years of litigation.
Once we have ensured quality, then we can talk quantity. The proposal to eliminate the cap on charter