Do schools that are free to innovate achieve better results? This question—a critical one to school reform—may be answered by the controversial charter schools movement.
Charter schools are public schools and publicly funded, yet they operate much like private schools. Largely independent of their local school districts, they are exempt from most of the rules and regulations that other public schools must follow (see box). The particular regulations that are waived vary from state to state, says Thomas Mauhs-Pugh of Dartmouth College. Typically, they cover areas such as curriculum decisions; the length of the school day and year; the number of classes students are required to take, and what those classes must be; the hiring of faculty; and collective bargaining and tenure.
What Is a Charter School?
What Is a Charter School?
Charter schools are public schools—but with several distinctive features. They operate independently of their local school districts, and they are bound by their charters (a sort of contract with their sponsoring agency) to achieve certain goals. Depending on the state's charter law, the sponsoring agency may be the local school board, the state board, a university, or another entity.
Charter schools are typically created by a group of entrepreneurial parents and teachers who want to realize their own vision of high-quality education—and are willing to put it to the test. They must raise their own start-up funds and find their own school facilities.
As public schools, charter schools are publicly funded and may not charge tuition. They must be nonsectarian, must abide by civil rights and health and safety rules, and (in most cases) may not set admission requirements.
Charter schools can take advantage of this freedom to offer innovative programs. The dozen or so charter schools in Minnesota, for example, are experimenting with multi-age classrooms, community-based learning activities, business internships, interdisciplinary and multicultural curriculums, culminating demonstrations, "computer-infused" teaching, and year-round education.
Under most charter laws, charter schools may be founded by parents, teachers, community groups, businesses, and other organizations. First, however, they must win the approval of a sponsor, which (depending on the state) may be the local school board, a county or state board, or a university.
Those who want to create charter schools must clear many hurdles. The approval process is often "arduous" and can take as long as two years, says Mauhs-Pugh. Funding is also a major obstacle. "What charter schools unanimously lack is start-up funds," he says, noting that these schools can't issue bonds and don't have access to public facilities.
Bluffview Montessori School in Winona, Minn., was a private school before its charter was approved in 1992, says Gail Lubahn, one of the school's two directors. Bluffview, which serves 100 students in grades K–6, has its own board of directors, with a teacher majority. Compared to regular public schools, "the staff has greater say in what goes on," Lubahn reports.
Toivola Meadowlands Charter School in Meadowlands, Minn., opened its doors in the fall of 1993. A K–12 school serving 190 students, Toivola Meadowlands was founded by a group of 12 parents. The school's curriculum emphasizes technology and the environment. Teachers at the school want to innovate, says Lynette Wihanto Smith, who chairs the school's board (composed of four licensed teachers and three parents). "Teachers here are mavericks."
In exchange for the freedom to experiment, charter schools accept a high level of accountability. Their charters spell out achievement goals that the schools must reach—or risk having their charters revoked by their sponsors.
"Charter schools are a performance-based system, which is very different from the traditional public school system," says Frank Dooling of Tacoma, Wash., who runs a discussion forum about charter schools on America Online. Regular public schools have no real incentive to change, because they are a monopoly, he says. Charter schools create an element of competition within the public school system that will generate systemwide improvement, Dooling and others believe.
Enormous Interest
Although the charter schools movement is small in terms of the number of schools that are up and running—only about 200 as of this fall—it is growing rapidly in terms of the number of states that have passed legislation allowing charter schools. Since 1991, when Minnesota became the first state to enact charter school legislation, 18 other states have followed suit. Experts predict that even more states will climb on the bandwagon in the near future.
"There's enormous interest in charter schools among legislators and policymakers of both parties," says Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota. Political leaders see charter schools as a means to increase innovation among schools without resorting to vouchers.
Enthusiasm is not universal, however. To date, most school districts have not encouraged the creation of charter schools, observers say. "The district system does not welcome chartering," says Ted Kolderie of the Center for Policy Studies in St. Paul, Minn. Almost everywhere, districts try to suppress this development, he says.
One reason for this chilly attitude is funding: charter schools divert money from the other public schools in the district. "In general, the charter school would have a negative effect on the funding of the [regular] local schools, because the money follows the student," says Mauhs-Pugh. (Often, however, not all the funding follows the student to the charter school; some is retained to help the district meet its fixed costs, he notes.) Other issues that cause friction include whether the school or district will be responsible for special education and transportation services, and which entity is legally liable in the case of accidents or lawsuits.
Some school districts have supportive relationships with their charter schools, experts say. Other districts do not.
When Bluffview Montessori sought charter status, some educators in the district felt threatened, Lubahn says. As a result, the school had to weather some "turmoil when trying to be established." The school is now settling into a relationship where "we coexist" with the district, she says. The district provides Bluffview with bus services only, and the school obtains special education services through a regional cooperative.
For Toivola Meadowlands Charter School and its school district, learning how to work together has been "a rocky road," says Smith. But the relationship is "smoothing out" now. Initially, district educators had concerns about the quality of education children would receive at the charter school. Concerns were also raised by the diversion of money from the regular public schools, and by the charter school's nonunion teaching force.
Like school districts, teacher unions have been wary of charter schools, experts say. Unions fear that charter schools could undermine collective bargaining and lead to wider acceptance of noncertified teachers. To forestall these effects, unions are working to influence charter legislation.
Strong Laws
Not all charter laws are alike. Of the 19 states that have passed charter laws, only about half have so-called "strong" laws, says Louann Bierlein of Louisiana State University. Strong laws grant enough autonomy to encourage entrepreneurial spirits to create charter schools. Predictably, the large majority of charter schools are in states with strong laws.
According to Bierlein, strong charter laws
- allow entities other than local school boards (such as county or state boards, or universities) to sponsor charter schools—or else they provide a process to appeal rejections by the local board;
- allow any individual or group to make a charter proposal, rather than limiting that prerogative to select groups, such as certified teachers;
- exempt charter schools from nearly all state and local laws, rules, and policies, rather than requiring charter schools to seek waivers on a case-by-case basis;
- give charter schools fiscal autonomy (full control over all funds generated by their student count);
- give charter schools legal autonomy, so that staff members are employees of the charter school (not the local district), with the charter board determining salary and contract provisions;
- allow individuals other than certified teachers to teach at charter schools; and
- do not limit the number of charter schools that can be formed in the state.
States with strong charter laws include Arizona, Michigan, Delaware, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Texas, and California, Bierlein says. States with weak laws include Wisconsin, Georgia, Kansas, Arkansas, and Alaska.
In states with strong laws, "you begin to see districts being much more conscious of, and responsive to, parents and teachers who want to try something new," Kolderie says. In these states, school boards know that if they give thumbs down to a proposed new approach—such as a Montessori program, for example—the approach may still become a reality, under someone else's sponsorship.
Accountability
It's too soon to tell whether charter schools will really be held accountable for results, most experts say. To date, only one charter school has had its charter revoked, for fiscal mismanagement.
For the most part, charter schools are being held accountable, says Bierlein. They are "being put under a microscope" because they're new and not liked by unions. However, formal assessment of charter schools by their sponsoring agencies "may not be as rigorous as one would like," she concedes.
The accountability issue is complicated by a "Catch-22," Bierlein says. Charter schools are being asked to meet certain goals, yet the profession hasn't reached agreement on which assessments are appropriate. Charter schools tend to use an array of measures to document their progress, she notes.
According to Nathan, charter schools use both measures of student achievement—including standardized tests, portfolios, and performance assessments (such as team-rated writing samples)—and measures of student behavior: attendance rates, the incidence of fighting, and so on. Other indicators include the degree of parent involvement and the attitudes of students and parents.
Lessons Learned
What have we learned from the charter schools movement to date? One key lesson, Nathan says, is that there are many groups of parents and teachers who want to create charter schools, and who are willing to work extremely hard to do so.
"One of the surprising things," says Mauhs-Pugh, "is that a lot of charter schools are oriented toward students who are hard to educate"—students who are "at risk," learning disabled, or wards of the state. Many charter schools are motivated by a desire to meet the needs of students who are not well served by the regular system.
On this score and others, critics' worst fears have not been realized, Mauhs-Pugh says. Charter schools haven't "creamed off" elite students, leaving regular public schools as a dumping ground. Nor do charter schools radically change regular public schools; their advent is "not an apocalyptic event." By the same token, the highest hopes of proponents have not been realized, Mauhs-Pugh says. Charter schools have not yet proven a panacea for the ills of American education.
Many advocates, however, believe charter schools have the potential to spark systemic change. "The measure of the success of charter schools will be their effect on other schools," says Alex Medler, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States (ECS). Whether such a ripple effect is happening yet is "very hard to measure," he says. To date, this systemic impact is "more rhetorical than empirical."
Toivola Meadowlands Charter School has "definitely" had a ripple effect, Smith says. Other schools in the area have borrowed ideas from the charter school. "It has introduced an element of competition—and that's healthy," she asserts.
Experts are uncertain what the future holds for charter schools. Medler expects to see more states with charter legislation and more charter schools, but he concedes that "there's not an infinite resource of people who want to do this." He also worries that charter schools may misdirect people's energies. "Charter schools bring thousands of new people to the school improvement business," but squander that resource by making people deal with the wrong issues: not curriculum and instruction but negotiating leases and installing sprinkler systems, he complains. Nathan believes that more states will adopt charter legislation, but he wonders if it will be strong, or "stifled" by school districts and unions.
The impact of charter schools won't become clear for another five years, says Mauhs-Pugh. So far, the movement is "all very, very tentative," he says. "People are proceeding very cautiously."
Bierlein is guardedly optimistic about the future of charter schools, because "a lot has been accomplished so far on the cheap." But the forces arrayed against charter schools are "really strong," she notes. And the public often confuses charter schools with voucher plans. This confusion—fed by the efforts of some voucher proponents to make charter schools "a backdoor to vouchers"—is an albatross around the neck of the charter schools movement.
What Charter Schools Are Like
Experts hesitate to generalize about charter schools. Beyond their charter status, these schools may have little in common with one another. To gather information about charter schools, the Education Commission of the States (ECS) and the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota recently conducted a survey of charter schools in seven states (California, Colorado, Massuchusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Wisconsin). The 110 schools that responded to the survey enroll about 27,500 students. Respondents were self-selected.
Most charter schools are small. The mean size is 287 students. Excluding California schools, the mean size is only 140 students.
Two-thirds of the schools responding to the survey (73) were designed to serve a cross-section of students. Half the schools (56) were designed to serve "at-risk" students, among others.
The academic focus most frequently cited by the schools was "integrated interdisciplinary curriculum." The second most popular focus was "technology," followed by "back to basics."
The most frequently cited reasons for chartering a school were "better teaching and learning for all kids," "running school according to certain principles and philosophy," and "exploring innovative ways of running a school."
"Leased commercial space" was the most frequent description of the charter school's location.
Charter schools use a variety of assessments to report student progress, including standardized tests, portfolios, surveys, and demonstrations of mastery.
The biggest barriers to starting a charter school were lack of start-up funds, problems with facilities, and finances.
Charter school operators urged legislators to give them autonomy by allowing sponsors other than local school districts, providing direct funding from the state, and granting them freedom from local labor-management agreements.
Adapted from Charter Schools . . . What Are They Up To? A 1995 Survey, by Alex Medler and Joe Nathan. Copies of this book are available for $10 from the ECS Distribution Center, (303) 299-3692 (ask for No. SI-95-1), or from the Center for School Change, Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, (612) 626-1834.