Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated
As we begin a new year, consider that charter schools were first authorized thirty years ago. As this sector of publicly funded but privately operated schools has matured, it has become clearer that a serious set of problems are part of charter schools’ very design. Charter schools were envisioned as free to innovate and less bound by regulation and bureaucracy. In a fine analysis just before the holidays, the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, Carol Burris summarizes some of the most pervasive problems she has noticed as she has traveled through a number of states examining their charter school sectors. The Network for Public Education has published two in-depth, multi-state reports on the impact of charters and school privatization—the recent Grading the States, and the 2017, Charters and Consequences. While charters are established in state laws which may differ from state to state, Burris has been tracking broad trends. She explains:
“Entrepreneurial governance, freed from most of the regulations and oversight mandated for true public schools, was at the heart of the ‘charter school experiment.’ Thirty years later, we have the results. Charter school students generally do about the same academically as their public school counterparts; in some places, they do better, and in others, they do worse. There is no evidence that charters are more innovative than public schools, with many relying on ‘no excuses’ discipline reminiscent of a late 19th-century school. The original idea of a teacher-led school designed to create innovative practices has been lost.”
Burris identifies five pervasive problems:
First: Freedom from regulations and public oversight under law—the kind of protection democratic governance provides public schools —has left charter schools vulnerable to widespread waste and fraud: “When public dollars freely flow without independent oversight, it is all too easy for dollars to find their way into employee pockets and bank accounts, for friends and relatives to get ‘sweetheart deals’ and for school leaders to receive astronomical salaries that would be unheard of in public schools… Every serious legislative attempt to rein in abuse meets opposition from the charter lobby, which makes strategic donations to legislators to avoid accountability.”
Second: Charter schools find sometimes subtle ways to select the students their operators CONTINUE READING: Charter School Sector Cannot Be Reformed or Effectively Regulated | janresseger
