Why Don’t Suburbanites Want Charter Schools?
Politics and personal preferences are at play
Soccer or lacrosse, Whole Foods or the farmers market, microbrew or Pinot Noir? Suburbanites tend to relish their many options for food and entertainment. At block parties, neighbors engage in hearty debates about the best place to vacation or the optimal car for shlepping one’s kids. So wouldn’t these very same parents—individuals who likely enjoy the privilege of choosing between a week on a beach or ski slope—want more choice when it comes to their children’s schools?
Not always. The data suggests that one form of school choice—charter schools—are less popular in suburbs than in cities. Why? Experts say that politics and personal preferences are at play.
Charter schools are funded by taxpayer dollars and, as such, can’t charge tuition or discriminate against children based on race, ethnicity, or disability. But as long as they fulfill certain accountability expectations, they’re able to operate on their own terms and, often, under their own governance structures. Some are organized by grassroots groups composed of teachers or parents, while others have been founded by organizations that run networks of schools, often in multiple states.
These schools have been hotly contested since the early 1990s, when Minnesota passed the country’s first charter-education law in the country. Proponents highlight their ability to innovate and serve diverse populations, as well as their freedom from the kinds of rigid bureaucratic rules that constrain traditional public schools. Advocates often cite the successes of well-established charter-school operators like Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). Critics, meanwhile, argue that they drain funds from public schools and “cream skim” the best students from a community. They point to charters that have come under scrutiny amid allegations of corruption or those that have produced poor academic outcomes and consequently shut down.
A little over 6,700 charter schools now operate in the United States, triple the number in 2000, according to “The State of the Charter School Movement,” a new report from the nonprofit consulting group Bellwether Education Partners. They serve close to 3 million students—or 6 percent of the total U.S. public-school enrollment—in 43 states and Washington, D.C, with most of the growth happening in 15 states, including California, Florida, and Ohio. Bellwether projects that charter schools could educate as many as one- to two-fifths of the country’s students by 2035, though that’s a liberal estimate.
Charter schools are concentrated in urban and less affluent areas—and it’s not just because of practical reasons, such as available infrastructure and philanthropic funding. According to the Bellwether report, 56 percent of charter-school students live in cities, versus just 29 percent of all U.S. children. (The remaining charter-school students are about evenly split between rural areas and the suburbs.) Relatedly, nearly two-thirds of the charter-school population is nonwhite, compared to about half of its regular public-school counterpart.
There are, of course, variations in the trends depending on the specific state and city. For example, 7 percent of students in New York City attend charter schools, compared to almost all—91 percent—of their peers in New Orleans. While California opened hundreds of new charters in the last four years, only two dozen were opened in Maryland during the same time frame. And just a small percentage of Colorado’s charter-school population is identified as low-income, versus a solid majority of the students attending charters in D.C.
Asked why there are so few suburban charter schools, Michael Petrilli, president of the charter-friendly Fordham Institute, said “it’s by design.” The first few states that signed charter-school legislation—like Wisconsin, California, and Colorado—had broader rules, enabling a wide range of charter schools to exist in those areas, he explained. These early-adopter states were able to enact looser laws because the opposition hadn’t yet fully organized, according to Petrilli. “The teachers’ unions”—which at the time were fighting vouchers—“were caught flat Why There’s Little Demand for Charter Schools in the Suburbs - The Atlantic: