Charter schools: heads & tails

By Jim Uphoff, Ed. D.

Almost six weeks ago I told readers that I welcomed additional articles that I could add to my “collection” for possible use in this column. One person did respond and sent via the Oakwood Register an article on the success of charter schools printed in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). I read it thoroughly and found it to be very interesting but also very typical of the paper which published it.

Its key message was that some research has shown that there are some charter schools (privately run but with public tax money) that have proven to be very successful for their students. [Heads] What the article did not address was that most other research has found that charter schools fail to do as well as the public schools which have elected and accountable local boards of education to oversee the expenditure of public tax money. [Tails]

Right here in our own Dayton area there are three or four very good charter schools whose students do very well on many tests. Unfortunately, there are also many local charter schools whose performance has been less than that of public-public schools serving similar populations. [Tails]

But there are also some urban public, public schools such as Dayton City’s Stivers Performing Arts Magnet School which is widely recognized for its excellence. This school has had strong parental support—a key ingredient for the success of any type school. It has ALSO had the careful “watch-over-ness” of an elected local board –a powerful combination.

The WSJ is, of course, oriented toward the business world and is highly supportive of the free enterprise system. [Heads] Thus it likes the idea of school funding coming from the government, but the dollars and program being then controlled by businesses. The fact that MAJOR businesses of our nation have over the past few years proven to be less than SUPER managers of any dollars—their own corporation’s or the public’s—was not addressed in the article at all.[Tails]

The bottom line is that the charter school experiment of providing public funds but little public accountability has NOT proven to be THE answer to improving our education system. [Tails] That some changes in the governance system and funding of our full educational system is needed in order to allow for innovations IS clear and a charter school system which does have real accountability built in may well be a viable option. [Heads] Thanks to the reader who sent me the article. I had to do some real thinking as a result!