Charters to save 'failing' public schools, but who's saving the failing charters?
Under proposed Senate Bills 669 and 895 and House Bill 1536, the Texas Opportunity School District would swoop in to properly educate and save the students attending “failing” public schools.
These bills are proposed to help heal those public schools with a 10-year minimum contract with a charter school Band-Aid, but with no guarantee for solving the student performance problem. The bills also provide a method for increasing the number of charter schools without having to follow the authorization process established in Senate Bill 2. As a matter of fact, SB 895 validates the quality of a charter school by asking the charter operator, “Is your charter a good one?” Talk about rigor!
I have an even better prescription that Texas should try. In my solution, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD will create “The Cypress-Fairbanks ISD Opportunity School District” to take over and manage failing charter schools.
Around 8.2 percent of public school campuses are classified as failing, but nearly 17 percent of charter schools are designated as failing. In fact, within three years of being included on the low-performing list, only seven out of approximately 8,500 traditional public schools are still designated as failing. If you are mathematically inclined, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of all Texas public school campuses are rated IR or AU for more than three years.
It seems that public schools are doing a great job of addressing low-performing schools without the added bureaucracy of another state agency. But there does appear to be a need to help charter schools, when nearly 1 in 5 are considered failing.
CFISD is recognized as one of the most effective school districts in the state when considering academic achievement and financial efficiency. We don’t pick and choose our students; we educate all students within our borders. The principles we practice should be quite useful in assisting the great number of failing charter schools. We feel that with more funding, less regulation and our processes, we can give thousands of students trapped in failing charter schools hope for a better tomorrow.
The proliferation of failing charter schools is the “civil rights issue of the 21st Century.” CFISD sees an opportunity to rescue these students and generate additional dollars to help offset the current underfunding (less operation funding than charters) that we receive. It is a win-win! Students at the failing charter school will benefit by receiving a quality education and CFISD students will benefit with more funding.
We are excited about the opportunity to teach so many charter school operators how to run an efficient and effective public school—our prescription meets every child’s needs!
Although this article is satirical, hundreds of public school districts have proven they are capable of rehabilitating low-performing campuses—a much more effective solution than an entirely unnecessary new state bureaucracy.
~ Mark Henry, Ed.D.
National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) Group: 1 in 5 charter schools not doing well enough to stay open
A group that oversees more than half of the nation's 5,600 charter schools said as many as one in five U.S. charter schools should be shut down because of poor academic performance.
