Posted 1/3/2005 9:17 PM

 

Charters: Success or failure?

 

To parents of children in the 3,000 publicly funded, independently run charter schools across the USA, the news must be bewildering. One day education researchers say charter schools are great; the next day brings reports of charter failures.

Consider these two reports in December:

·         Compared with students in regular schools, children attending charter schools perform no better in reading and worse in math, according to a Department of Education study of 150 charters.

·         Not so, according to a report from Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby, who weighed results from charter schools in 36 states and found those students ahead in both reading and math.

What looks like conflicting research, though, is actually a matter of measuring the wrong things. Lumping all charter schools together is mostly useless. Charter schools range from experiments aimed at rescuing dropouts to programs providing performing arts students a school to sing or dance at. What's to compare?

Parents considering charter schools need better advice than these apples-to-oranges studies. A better guide comes from independent education researchers who say the most successful charters:

Insist on rigorous instruction. Students at KIPP Academies, probably the most successful charter schools in the U.S., feed a college-prep curriculum to poor and minority students in large doses: nine-hour days, half days on Saturdays and an extra month during the summer. And it pays off. Three of every four KIPP graduates go on to college, compared with fewer than half the students in the neighborhood schools they left.

Innovate. Often, what's innovative about charter schools is not new teaching techniques but how the schools are run. The founders of the five Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles organized a teachers union and pushed decision-making, including hiring, to the classroom level. That attracts talented teachers and raises salaries - the payoff from using half as many administrators as traditional Los Angeles schools.

Welcome accountability. The 11 Aspire charter schools in California practice "360-degree accountability," in which parents give letter grades to teachers and administrators. Students, parents and teachers sign academic warranties agreeing on what students should be learning and what happens if they fall short. Students are tracked not just on test scores but also on such measures as the ability to handle time wisely.

The studies lumping charters together point to a problem: Not all charters are successful, and far too many low-performing charters are allowed to continue operating. Instead, mediocre learning results should be grounds for shutting some charters down.

And yet charters can offer promise to students trapped in failing schools. When the Philadelphia schools hit bottom in 2001, the city converted some schools to charters, turned others over to outside groups such as universities, and revamped most of the rest.

The 20 Edison charter schools in Philadelphia performed well - but so did the regular schools. Together, there was synergy that raised standards and shook up business-as-usual at all of the schools. That's the promise of quality charters, regardless of the confusing news from national studies.

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2005-01-03-charter-schools-our_x.htm