Recently I have had students transfer from my public high school to a charter school. Two of my favorite students were enrolled in my Algebra Applications class. This class is my school’s lowest track for mathematics students that struggle with the subject. These two students were always energetic and eager to learn, but struggled to grasp concepts at the same pace as the majority of their peers. At the end of the year they both came to see me, sad and embarrassed. They had flunked out of public high school and had decided to transfer to a charter school. They said the charter school had much lower expectations for its students and they knew that they would be able to graduate and receive a high school diploma there. This frustrated me an educator that they had an “easier option” at a charter school and that we were not able to retain them as students This experience led me to do some research on charter schools as I was curious why my former students had chosen to pursue that route instead of trying to earn credits back at our public school.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools that operate as a private business with the goal of educating students to the highest levels. These schools have become increasing popular across the United States as many parents have lost their faith in the general education that can be found at traditional public schools. Many “politicians are quick to help open new charter schools and create high levels of optimism but they are reluctant to shut down these same charter schools when they clearly underperform.” (Turnamian, 2011, p. 163) Charter schools depend on state and national funding to operate, but they are not held to the same standards as public schools. Some of the main issues associated with charter schools are accountability, misuse of funds, inability or unwillingness to take on all students and the fact that they are not required to have certified educators and administrators to teach the students. According to Peter Turnamian (2011), a former charter school founder and current elementary principal, “the charter school movement stakes its very effectiveness and value on increased levels of accountability and measurable student achievement results; but it fails to hold itself to these same standards.” Because of this some of the best and worst schools in this country are charter schools.
Today many people view the charter school movement as a modern reform of public education.
There are several historic phenomena that began to resonate with educators, parents, and the general public during the 1980s. These phenomena include: the disillusionment of legislators with public education's ability or inclination to solve the perceived education equity issues, a mainstream-mediated and publicized impression that the United States is falling behind in the world economy … and that the declines are the result of failures of within American public schools, more focus on test results, the opportunity given to parents for choice and control of school and curriculum for their child, and the media reports of high success charter schools. (Knaak and Knaak, 2013) These are all deep public concerns that helped to lead to the creation of the first charter school. “Minnesota opened the first charter school in 1992. Today, 40 states and the District of Columbia have approved them.” (Mooney, 2007) State laws allow for the formation of charter schools either as a completely new school or a district school that can be converted to a charter school. Each state has their own unique law for how charter schools are governed and funded.
In Arizona, charter schools receive funding based on student enrollment and additional funding for those students with disabilities. Charter schools also have access to funds not available to traditional public schools including low-interest loans and federal grants. Arizona law allows charter schools up to $200,000 from Arizona taxpayers for start-up costs and costs associated with renovating or remodeling structures. (Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services, 2014) Unlike district public schools, charter schools have more control of how many and what kind of students that they take on. Charter schools are allowed to limit the number of students that they can service each year and are simply required to have a waiting list for students that do not make the cut. This practice allows schools to discriminate as the students left off the list are not audited by local government. The students that tend to be hit the hardest are special education students with severe disabilities. Garcy (2011) conducted several studies regarding the enrollment of special education students in charter school. His findings were that students who had more severe and expensive disabilities were less likely to attend an Arizona public charter school than a regular district school. He also stated that “charter schools may be able to impede the enrollment of special education students by narrowly defining the educational mission of the school. This makes it improbable or impossible for some special education students to meet the demands of the curriculum.”(Garcy, 2011, p. 3) Demographics for charter schools differ based on location and the mission of each charter school. Some charter schools focus on assisting minority or high-risk students to graduate high school while other charter schools focus on achievement scores and tend to have mostly white populations. Since each school works as its own corporation they each have different goals which lead to varied results.
Charter schools have become prevalent because they promise a better education for students than district public schools can provide. However, how do they perform when actually compared with public schools? The chart below shows the test scores for district public schools compared to charter schools on the AIMS test in 2009. Looking at the results, it is clear that in the top three categories, excelling, highly performing and performing plus, charter schools have a smaller percentage of schools that received the high marks when compared with traditional schools. (Arizona Education Network, 2009)
(Not able to copy and paste here, please see my word document for chart)
These results tend to disprove the promise offered by many charter schools and if that promise is not kept, one has to wonder what other problems are associated with charter schools?
The main idea of charter schools is that they will operate as a private corporation outside of the state’s traditional educational system so that they can focus on learning as opposed to dealing with the bureaucracy that is associated with district public schools. However, the “trouble is that deregulation creates opportunities for mountebanks to pilfer the public purse, abuse children, and the like. As a matter of fact, to the extent that charter operators have freedom of action, the confidence tricksters and bunko artists among them find opportunities for fraud and misuse of public funds. (Clabaugh, 2009, p. 85) There are many examples that give credence to the issues mentioned above. Clabaugh (2009) discussed one such charter school in Philadelphia that the local newspaper reported had been involved in multiple scandals including diverting funds to its owning group to be used in other businesses and was being investigated by local law enforcement. The school was also only using 38.4 percent of the school’s budget for instructional purposes and test scores were dropping dramatically. Knaak and Knaak (2013) also stated that two charter schools in Pennsylvania were under investigation. At the first charter school, the school’s operator hired family members and routinely made purchases from companies he owned. The second charter school was investigated for high administrative expenses, including millions of dollars paid in rent, management fees, and salaries that went to a for-profit company associated with the school. These problems are a byproduct of the lack of accountability that states have for charter schools and display the vulnerabilities of the charter school system. Charter schools are growing rapidly every year and many parents are choosing to take students out of traditional public schools. Based on the research and statistics presented, being in a charter school is not necessarily a good thing for a student. Of course, there are some excellent charter schools out there; however there simply are not enough guidelines for how these schools should be run to make up for all of the charter schools that are misusing funds and taking advantage of our students.
“The charter school movement has attained acclaim as educational reform that is not sustained by juried research or evidential experience. Charter schools will likely continue to function in the United States because of influential backers … However … they are a failed initiative.” (Knaak and Knaak, 2013, p. 52-53) Charter schools should not be allowed to continue to function as they currently are in present day. Failure to address the issues presented by them will only lead to more potential issues and problems. Politicians and media love to create big, splashy success stories for charter schools because they are an easy story as opposed to looking at the underlying problems and solutions to our traditional public education system. Many people tend to forget the public education system exists to educate all students to the best of our abilities. Clearly, not all charter schools are accomplishing that goal. According to Turnamian (2011) the charter school movement must shrink, not expand. Failing and mediocre charter schools need to be closed and their resources returned to the traditional public school system. There is simply no reason to continue to put our faith in charter schools. The very way in which they were created allows for a lack of accountability and if charter schools are handled in the same way as traditional schools than there is no need for their existence.
References
Arizona Education Network. (2009). Arizona Schools – Quick Facts. Retrieved from http://www.arizonaeducationnetwork.com/2009/05/school-information/
Clabaugh, G. K. Deregulation and Charter School Swindles: When the Cat's Away…Educational Horizons, 87(2), 82-87 Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.libproxy.nau.edu/ehost/detail
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Garcy, A. M. (2011) High Expense: Disability Severity and Charter School Attendance in Arizona. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 79(6), 1-27 Retrieved from http://eds.a.
ebscohost.com.libproxy.nau.edu/ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=4d0846e7-8579-4673-8cd2-8748f2a23960%40sessionmgr4003&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=eft&AN=508180302
Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services. “Arizona Charter Schools Want Bigger Share of State Funds” The Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved form http://azstarnet.com/search/?l=50&sd=desc&s
=start_time&f=html&byline=By%20Howard%20Fischer%0ACapitol%20Media%20Services
Knaak, W. C. & Knaak J. T. (2013) Charter Schools: Educational Reform or Failed Initiative? Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 79(4), 45-53 Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.libproxy.
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Mooney, Karen. “The ABC’s of Charter Schools” Abc News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.
com/WN/Spotlight/story?id=3700261&page=1
Turnamian, P. (2011) What I've Learned about Charter Schools after Ten Years on the Front Lines. Kappa Delta Pi Record, 47(4), 162-165 Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.
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