Can charter schools be reformed? Should they be?
In 2013, I published a post with this headline: “Why charter schools need better oversight.” The author of the piece, Jeff Bryant, wrote:
There are undoubtedly wonderful charter schools in existence, and Americans generally have a favorable opinion of charters, but hardly a week goes by without news of a scandal or a study tarnishing their image....Leading off the charter scandal parade was Pennsylvania where an auditor general found that the state’s largest charter school pocketed $1.2 million “in improper lease-reimbursement payments.” The scheme the school was running has become all too familiar to anyone following the nefariousness of some charter school operators....In Texas, a charter school located in Houston was recently accused of funneling of $5.3 million in federal funds to questionable destinations, including ”hotels, cruises and travel packages,” six-figure salaries, and, again, a real estate scheme involving a management company and the charter school....
Five years later, the same remains true: there are some wonderful charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, but the sector is rife with scandal and critics charge that they are harming the traditional public schools which enroll most of America’s children.
What was once billed as a model for the improvement of traditionally governed public schools has become a troubled parallel system of privately managed schools with, in many places, patterns of waste, fraud and segregation.
In this post, veteran educator and public education advocate Carol Burris looks at the charter sector and asks and answers these questions: Can charter schools be reformed? Should they be?
Burris is a former New York high school principal who now serves as executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. She was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, and in 2013, the National Association of Secondary School Principals named her the New York State High School Principal of the Year. Burris has been chronicling problems with modern school restructuring and school choice for years on this blog. She has previously written about problems with charter schools in California and other states.
By Carol Burris
Last month, The Answer Sheet published a piece I co-wrote with education historian Diane Ravitch about school governance, which gave rise to a lively debate in the education community and additional commentary. Much of that conversation centered on the recent report issued by the California-based Learning Policy CONTINUE READING: Can charter schools be reformed? Should they be? - The Washington Post
