Charter School Battle Heats Up
As these privately run, publicly funded schools expand, traditional ones are feeling threatened
BOSTON— Natasha Brown spent five years trying to get her 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son into one of this state’s 80 charter schools. After entering at least 25 lotteries, she secured slots for them this fall.
Those tough odds have sparked a dispute in the state. At least 37,000 families are on waiting lists for charter schools statewide, with 13,000 of them seeking spots in Boston alone, according to data reported to the state.
In coming days, legislators at the Massachusetts State House will begin holding hearings on whether to expand or limit the number of charter schools in the state.
More than two decades since charter schools first appeared in the U.S. as an experiment, they are poised to become mainstream in many parts of the country. About 2.5 million, or 5.1% of public-school students, were enrolled in charter schools in the 2013-2014 school year, up from 300,000, or 0.7%, in 1999-2000, according to federal statistics.
Nearly every major city has charters, challenging the traditional public-school model as parents increasingly send their children to these privately run but publicly funded institutions and politicians allocate more tax dollars.
The dispute in Boston and similar clashes in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Los Angeles are surfacing as local charter schools reach or surpass a 15% to 20% market share in those cities.
“The tension is, ‘What’s the end game here?’ Is this a model to replace the traditional public school model?” said Matthew Chingos, a senior fellow who studies education at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan policy research group.
“Once students start to leave” public schools for charter schools “in large numbers, that’s where you see a lot of the tensions,” said Nina Rees, president and chief executive of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a pro-charter nonprofit.
Rashad Brown, center, watching other students take part in an improvised scenario during Ruthi Snoke's theatre class at the Roxbury Preparatory Charter School in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. PHOTO: ZAK BENNETT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The charter movement offers more school choice, alternatives to lagging public schools and more autonomy from bureaucracy to try new learning approaches. Challenges have included regulating quality at charter schools, making them accessible to more students and transferring successful practices from charters to traditional classrooms.
Critics contend that charters draw more motivated families, leaving districts with fewer resources to educate the neediest students.
“They’ve turned it into a separate and markedly not equal system,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union, said in an interview.
Supporters argue that charters are a proven, good alternative for many children from Charter School Battle Heats Up - WSJ:
