Seeking common ground with charter critic Diane Ravitch - The Washington Post:
Seeking common ground with charter critic Diane Ravitch
I have been exchanging emails with
Diane Ravitch, the clearest voice in the movement to reverse American emphasis on raising school achievement no matter what. She is a brilliant historian and essayist, even if she does not share my fondness for this century’s biggest education reform: charter schools.
We agree that disadvantaged children have to be rescued from poverty before most of them can learn as much as middle-class kids. But while the country struggles to make that happen, why can’t we, in the meantime, support those public charter schools that are preparing significant numbers of low-income children for college?
Charter schools are still growing. There are about 7,000 in 42 states and the District. They have 3 million students, six times more than 15 years ago. I have visited more than 50 great charters, but I know that many others are bad.
In 2015, 400 charters opened while 270 were closed for lack of students, money or academic success. The NAACP wants a moratorium on charter expansion. Voters in Georgia and Massachusetts just turned down measures to increase charters. Education Week found that low-performing cybercharters are still getting state money because of heavy lobbying by their corporate sponsors.
I asked Ravitch: Would you shut down charters altogether, even if some were run by dedicated educators who were giving students more than they got in their regular public schools? At this critical moment for charter schools, with Ravitch so influential on the anti-charter side, her answer is important.
“I would call a moratorium for all new charters,” Ravitch said. “All charters would be required to be financially and academically transparent.” She would ban for-profit charters. Charters would have to fill all empty seats each year, she said, so average test scores would not rise just because low-performing students had left. Charters would have to have the same demographics as regular schools in their neighborhoods, she said, with the same portion of students with disabilities and students learning English.
Ravitch also would require characteristics that the best charters already have: collaboration with public schools, charter boards made of local community members and racially diverse student bodies.
Ravitch’s ideas are worth discussing, but she has not eased my fears about what would happen to the best charters. Their successes depend on giving their principals and teachers the freedom to innovate.
