OUTSIDE THE HEATED interior of our rental car, the temperature was bitterly cold. The low, gray midday sky reminded us that we were well into a midwestern winter. Looking out from our vehicle, we witnessed block after block of empty streets. This was a ghost town built on the bones of a once-vibrant community: vacant homes where parents had previously raised their sons and daughters now plastered with Do Not Occupy signs, rusted swings and slides with No Trespassing signs where children had previously played until sunset, abandoned places of worship now for sale, and empty storefronts that signaled a once-bustling local economy.
We could see in the remnants of this community the former promise of a Norman Rockwell vision of American life. Now, however, all that remained was haunting emptiness. And for those proud Americans trying to get by that had no option but to survive in this dystopia, the absence of stores and community services made us wonder how they accessed basic resources such as food, education, and medical care.
As we slowly drove down the desolate streets, we understood why no one from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) office offered to provide us a tour of the public schools in this area. In fact, CPS representatives advised us against visiting this part of South Chicago because of its reputation for violence. But we knew that in order to understand the impact school closures had on a community, we needed to see firsthand the neighborhoods where schools were being shut down and not to rely on hearsay and spotty media coverage. When we spoke with Dr. Howard Rosing, executive director of the Steans Center at DePaul University, he described how closing schools killed neighborhoods, broke the spirit of communities already in despair, and was done over the objections of local leaders. He told us how South Chicago had been pushed to near revolution.
Sadly, the dismal conditions were not isolated to the Windy City. In Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, DC, and other metropolitan areas throughout the country, we observed similar instances of local school closures wreaking havoc on communities. As a result of the neighborhood decay we witnessed, we called into question the decisions and actions taken by politicians and those on the front lines of public education.
Through our investigation, a broader question surfaced: Is public education in decline? According to the media, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Among those who are not sure, they often point to changes within society at large, such as the widespread deterioration of courtesy, social mores, and academic expectations from teachers and students. Even those who staunchly reject that public education is in decline acknowledge that, at least, the institution is in transition.
The question of public education’s decline is most relevant to consumers and providers.
Consumers are not only the parents and guardians of K–12 students but also the community at large, which includes grandparents, neighbors, civic organizations that have an interest in schools, business interests such as companies that develop a workforce for the future, individuals interested in national security, faith-based organizations, and philanthropists.
Consumers also include those individuals who seek to improve the quality of life in the United States—whether they recognize it or whether they have children, they have a stake in public education.
Providers are professionals on the front line of public education and the educational establishment. The front line of public education comprises administrators, teachers, and support staff. The educational establishment includes the US Department of Education, state departments of education, county departments of education, district boards of education (including their own administrations), and associations and unions.
Troubling School Statistics
While consumers and providers may debate the causes of the problems plaguing public education as a whole, the struggles schools face today are both serious and undeniable. According to a report issued by the District of Columbia Public Schools in 2017, only 32 percent of third graders in Washington, DC, public schools can read proficiently. In 2017, Normandy School District in St. Louis County, Missouri, with a predominately African American student population, had a 73.4 percent high school graduation rate (73.2 for its black students). Clayton School District, located five miles away, has a predominately white student population and had a 98.15 percent graduation rate in 2017 (100 percent for its black students). In the 2016 fiscal year, Detroit Public Schools had a $215.9 million deficit. Overall, only 25 percent of high school graduates are proficient in math. And only 37 percent of high school graduates are proficient in reading.
Parental Expectations Dashed by a Dysfunctional System
All parents strive for the best for their children. At the top of this aspiration is securing a first-rate education. No matter urban or rural, rich or poor, according to the promise of public education, every community should offer free and equitable schools that maintain high quality and expectations.
Indeed, alongside the hope of millions of parents, the purpose of public education is to prepare young people to be responsible citizens, who intelligently exercise their right to vote, become productive individuals, and positively contribute to society—this is what we define as the educational social contract. Unfortunately, public schools as a whole have never lived up to this ideal. In fact, the gap between what public education should be and what it actually represents in communities throughout this nation continues to grow wider.
Through our investigation, we conducted interviews with mayoral offices, officials with state departments of education, state senators, assembly representatives, other civic leaders responsible for developing or influencing public education policy, representatives of the community, chartered school leaders, educational reform leaders, academics, parents, teachers, and administrators. The parents we interviewed across the country repeatedly named safety and a welcoming atmosphere as high priorities when it came to an educational setting for their children. But after visiting schools throughout the United States and interviewing consumers and providers, our research showed that most schools have consistently failed on both accounts. In Charter Storm, we will share our experiences in search of the answer to the following questions:
Shortly after we embarked on our journey, the answers to these questions became abundantly clear. Based on our cross-country investigation and interviews, educational reform is sweeping the country in varying degrees. The desire for change is rapidly and increasingly disrupting public education as a whole.
While we found many excellent traditional public schools, in the aggregate, outstanding schools were the exception rather than the rule. This was particularly true in urban areas, where the highest concentration of our nation’s children is educated and where schools consistently fall short.
What we found was a high number of schools with hostile and threatening conditions, in which rampant verbal abuse and bullying among students went largely ignored by school staff, in which teachers and administrators demonstrated powerlessness or indifference to tackling the school’s biggest problems, and in which students were disengaged with the learning process.
But even in state-of-the-art, beautiful campuses located in affluent communities—far away from poverty and violence—students frequently reported feeling unsafe.
The bottom line is the systemic problems within public education are varied and extensive. Collectively, they have resulted in widespread depression and emotional withdrawal among students and a general discontent with the institution itself from students and staff alike. In the end, parents and guardians around the country are struggling to address the needs of children who are enrolled in dysfunctional schools.
Enter the Chartered School
Imagine a learning environment that maintains a student-first approach. Think about what a school would look like if teachers were equally as engaged as their students in the learning process. At its core, such a driven approach to education would engender the following four qualities:
Prior to the introduction of chartered schools, implementing such an effective and innovative framework was challenging and discouraging for those working within the existing traditional public school system, which was entrenched in bureaucracy and government regulation and constrained by the self-serving agendas of powerful special interests. Offering parents schools that upheld the preceding four qualities required a dramatic educational paradigm shift that had to work outside the public education establishment but still exist within a tax-funded structure.
This new approach would be based on a market-driven principle of parental choice that maintained the following premise: Each child learns differently. So rather than be bound to a one-size-fits-all model of education, where parents are limited to having their kids attend one local campus, parents could choose a school that met the particular needs of their sons and daughters. In other words, as the primary educators of their children, parents would be free to select the best instructional match for their children among a variety of schools.
WHAT IS MARKET-DRIVEN?
This hallmark of capitalism in the United States is an organizational characteristic and performance metric that is informed by economic forces such as supply and demand, market share, profit and loss, and competition.
Companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, and Apple have captured retail market share through their superior products and services. In a market-driven system, customers will patronize a service that welcomes them, meets or exceeds their expectations, and provides high-quality outcomes. A market-driven organization sustains itself by identifying the impact of future events and developing a plan that focuses on solvency and safeguards against future losses. Market-driven entities tend to focus on internal competencies that foster a greater responsiveness to their customers and target market.
In 1991, Minnesota was the first state to grant itself the power to become an authorizer. In public education, an authorizer is the entity given the authority to grant charters. Charters are written contracts that allow the creation of institutions (in this case, a new type of public school). An authorizer may be a university or a state or local organization (such as a board of education, county department of education, or an independent commission). Currently, forty-three states have charters allowing for the establishment of entities other than local school districts to offer public education.
As Ted Kolderie explained in his book The Split Screen Strategy: Improvement + Innovation, today, the term “charter school” refers to a type of public school. But originally, this new type of institution had no such designation. Rather, it was simply a public school created by a charter—in other words, a chartered public school. Chartered schools were designed to be independent institutions contracted by districts, the state, or state-designated entities. They emerged as an educational model that would usher in a breakthrough, market-driven approach to public schools.
In order to uphold the original intent of this type of public school, throughout this book, we will use the term “chartered school,” rather than the more commonly used “charter school.” We will also refer to non-chartered public schools as traditional public schools or traditional schools to distinguish them from chartered schools. While both chartered and traditional schools are public schools, as you will read, significant differences exist between the two.
A Brief Overview of Chartered Schools
Within educational reform, two major movements arose in the 1990s: the adoption of information technology and the legislation that created chartered schools.
Think of these two movements as “Reforms” with an uppercase R. Contrast these with reforms that rehashed, renamed, reshaped, and reidentified programs, projects, and concepts that already existed, were slightly modified, and then were reintroduced into the classroom or the school system. Consider these as “reforms” with a lowercase r. In other words, these movements have been more evolutionary than revolutionary.
The distinction between Reforms and reforms is significant because the public education establishment has pointed to little-r reforms—such as standards-based education, individualized education, and more recently, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and Common Core—to demonstrate how public education is at the forefront of continuous improvement and innovation. But little-r reforms such as these pale in comparison to the following Reforms.
First, the digital age dramatically changed pedagogy and school-site and district-level administration. Smart classrooms and countless online resources have transformed how educators teach and students learn. Attendance, grading, and human resources data are web-based, and technology will continue to create new possibilities for instruction and administration.
Second, from the original legislation that created chartered schools, a new market-driven option emerged that single-handedly reshaped public education.
The political and public support of chartered schools was largely in response to concerns regarding the state of public education in the early 1990s. At the time, multiple disturbing conditions called into question the health of our public education system: campus drug trafficking and gang violence; achievement gaps among the economically disadvantaged, immigrant populations, and ethnic minorities; school district budget and management scandals; teacher union malfeasance; a general lack of school accountability; and concerns over global competitiveness of our nation’s youth. As a result, the future of the institution rose to the top of public discourse.
Politicians, academics, business leaders, and parents sought solutions to a system in crisis, and those passionate about educational reform went to work to determine how to solve public education’s greatest problems. From these intense discussions, a market-driven approach emerged as an innovative way to combat the low standards and expectations that plagued public education.
In 1992, California enacted groundbreaking legislation that opened the doors for chartered schools. California’s high profile placed a national spotlight on chartering. For the next twenty years, the chartered school movement expanded in the Golden State, as well as across the nation.
The introduction of a market-driven approach has become the most significant movement in public education over the past two decades.
Those of us who were at the forefront of the chartered school movement so many decades ago look back in awe at the breathtaking progress chartered schools have made during such a short period. For example, The Charter School of San Diego (CSSD), chartered in 1993, was the twenty-eighth chartered school authorized by the California State Board of Education. It was also the first authorized in the San Diego Unified School District and San Diego County.
While CSSD was identified as a start-up chartered school, it was actually part of a state program called Education Clinic Alternatives, which was created to stem the tide of public school dropouts within San Diego and other parts of the state.
THE TWO TYPES OF CHARTERED SCHOOLS IN CALIFORNIA
California has two chartered school models: (1) conversion chartered schools and (2) start-up chartered schools. Conversion chartered schools were originally traditional public schools. A start-up chartered school has no history of being a traditional school. From the start, it is established as a chartered school.
CSSD’s transition from a district-dependent program to a full-fledged chartered school is the story of a passionate and committed cadre of educators, businesspeople, and community supporters. And now, two decades later, the chartered school movement in California has increased from an initial cap of one hundred chartered schools to over twelve hundred that serve well over half a million students.
From their inception, chartered schools were designed to be a hybrid institution: On the one hand, they would uphold the educational social contract. They would also be subject to oversight and held accountable to ensure students were learning and teachers were maintaining professional standards. On the other hand, chartered schools were encouraged to experiment and innovate to develop new ways of inspiring students to learn and reach their greatest potential. They were also designed as a way for teachers to establish small schools that would bring educators together who shared a common mission. Teachers could actively collaborate with parents to create a student-focused learning environment.
Chartered schools meet their ambitious objectives by a system of governance that is different from that of traditional public schools. Of the forty-three states that authorize chartered schools, each one has its own set of rules guiding how they are created and governed. Since their inception, chartered schools have gained significant ground in communities where they have been established. This separate set of rules gives chartered schools the ability to implement new methodology, make decisions quickly, and adapt to change—all of which were difficult to accomplish within the heavily bureaucratic, regulated, and politicized traditional public education system.
In chapter 4, “Pushback Part 1,” we will explore the governance and compliance differences between chartered schools and their traditional public school counterparts, why they played an essential role in the original design of chartered schools and are still relevant today, and why these fundamental differences are the topic of the most heated debates regarding the role of chartered schools within public education.
Rise of the Consumer’s Voice: Parents Vote with Their Feet
Before chartered schools, “market-driven” was a term reserved for the world outside traditional public education. This term described how supermarkets, telephone companies, airlines, gas stations, and other businesses operated. No doubt, parents are consumers in a market-driven economy. But for most of public education’s history, the institution has maintained a relative market-share monopoly. Thus, the vast majority of parents throughout the country had one option for public education: the nearby neighborhood school.
While private schools have played a role in K–12 education, the small numbers of students they serve mean they have never posed a large-scale threat to traditional public schools. But with the emergence of chartered schools, an increasing number of public school parents have shifted their allegiance. The most high-profile examples of students enrolled in chartered schools in the 2015–16 school year are as follows:
Since 1992, 6,900 chartered schools have been established that enroll nearly three million K–12 students. In the ten years leading to the 2016–17 school year, enrollment in chartered schools nearly tripled, making them the fastest growing form of school in the United States. And in many US cities, chartered school enrollments are approaching 20–25 percent or more of district students.
According to the California Department of Education, for the 2016–17 school year, California had 1,248 operating chartered schools that educated more than 602,000 students. The outcomes for ethnic minorities enrolled in chartered schools are better than those in traditional schools. For instance, in 2013, 19 percent of African American and Latino chartered school students were accepted into the state’s flagship public university system, the University of California, compared to 11 percent of black and Latino traditional public school students. These positive results point to the power of choice. When given the option, millions of parents across the country have opted for chartered schools. Today, consumers are making educational decisions for their children based on schools that are welcoming, academically engaging, and safe.
On a national basis, however, only one in sixteen children attends chartered schools. When it comes to overall market share, the total number of students enrolled in chartered schools pales in comparison to those attending traditional public schools. This low percentage also reflects the limited number of communities that have chartered schools. And where they are present, they frequently are filled to capacity and maintain waiting lists.
Chartered schools have provided parents educational choices that align with the market-driven decisions they make in other aspects of their lives. With chartered schools, parents are able to choose the educational environment that best aligns with their children’s needs. While this market-driven framework has fueled the growth of chartered schools and empowered parents in a way never before seen in the United States, it has also threatened traditional public schools’ hegemony.
Maintaining the Status Quo: Pushback against Chartered Schools
Throughout our country, public schools receive the majority of their funding through student attendance. For instance, in California, school districts are required to comply with the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). This is a school district’s three-year strategy for how it will use state funding to serve all students. Under current LCAP funding, a school district receives about ten thousand dollars per year for each student. Traditional public schools have maintained a monopoly on this essential revenue source.
In school districts where chartered schools have been established, their long-standing income-generating source has been put at risk. Given that a geographic area a school district serves has a specific number of students, traditional schools have found themselves competing with chartered schools over the same population of students.
The popularity of chartered schools has resulted in decreased student enrollment in traditional public schools. This is compounded by changing demographics in the United States. As the general population contracts, K–12 enrollments have decreased in states and cities across the nation. Increased immigration in some parts of the United States has helped mitigate the overall impact of population decline. Otherwise, the effect of the reduced enrollment in those areas would be devastating.
Empty classroom seats mean less revenue. And less revenue means schools must reduce their teaching staff and increase class sizes. School districts may also be forced to cut spending that may result in decreased facilities maintenance and school services, employee layoffs, and even the sale of school properties.
For the first time in their history, traditional public schools are having to consider market-driven principles such as supply and demand, market share, competition, public relations, and marketing in order to address lower enrollment. But rather than adjust to how chartered schools have changed the public education landscape, school districts across the country are engaging in the practice of pushback in order to maintain their stronghold on per-student funding. Broadly speaking, pushback is primarily a response by superintendents, school boards, central offices, unions, state organizations, and other groups to either slow or stop the growth of chartered schools. Their objective is to hold on to the students within a traditional school’s boundaries, stop the flow of students from a traditional school’s campus, and maintain the status quo.
The status quo is how those within the educational establishment conduct the business of education on a daily basis. It comprises written and unwritten belief statements that are the result of learned behavior—traditional and past practices that are a school district’s efforts to maintain certain long-standing and previous practices; the way those within the educational establishment see how schools fit within the broader US landscape; policies, procedures, and educational code; and the process by which school districts must maintain continual growth in order to remain solvent.
Wherever chartered schools are growing, pushback is occurring. On the moderate end of the pushback spectrum, pushback is a calculated effort to slow chartered schools’ growth and expansion. On the extreme end, it is an effort to destroy whatever threatens the educational status quo. In chapter 4, “Pushback Part 1,” we will further explore pushback and the status quo, why pushback is becoming increasingly aggressive, and how it is interfering with the objectives of those who have tirelessly labored to improve public education in the United States.
Pushback may be demonstrated by a variety of behaviors. Authorizers may attempt to micromanage the operation of the chartered school. Many school districts may require that chartered school governance mimic the rules and principles districts follow. (Most chartered schools operate under corporate law. Many school districts operate under education code.) Authorizers may be reluctant to approve new chartered schools. Authorizers may place unreasonable expectations for the renewal of chartered schools. Chartered schools often experience inequitable funding, reluctant support in their effort to seek facilities, or a threat of revocation.
A Point of No Return
A strong national defense and healthy international trade will do little for the socioeconomic and political future of the United States without a well-educated citizenry prepared to strengthen our communities on both a micro and macro level. No doubt, the future success of our nation relies on fulfilling the educational social contract. If we equip young people to be self-sufficient adults, informed voters, and productive citizens, we will revive the essential community resources and landmarks that were once left to decay under apathy and neglect.
Whether your perspective is that public education is in sharp decline or merely in transition, you will agree that, because our nation’s future depends on a well-educated citizenry, the responsibility of public education is both significant and overwhelming. While parents across the country have sought to enroll their sons and daughters in traditional public schools that meet their children’s needs, as our investigation has revealed, many traditional schools have either benignly or blatantly neglected the communities they are funded to serve. This is especially true in our nation’s urban centers, areas with a high concentration of ethnic minorities, and socioeconomically disadvantaged regions.
With the introduction and rise of chartered schools, parents have a new market-driven public education model that is academically and fiscally accountable, innovative, flexible, and ready to meet the needs of communities that have been underserved by traditional public education. While misinformation and misconceptions about chartered schools have resulted in their being labeled as harbingers of doom that represent the weakening or even demise of public education, as you have learned, from their original design and onset, chartered schools have always been part of the public education system.
Chartered schools represent the best of what a dramatically changing public education landscape has to offer. At the same time, the chartered school model is still in its early stages and is continually evolving and improving. Unfortunately, pushback threatens the very strength of the original design of chartered schools: to experiment and develop new ways to operate and to inspire students to reach their greatest potential.
Despite often aggressive resistance by those grasping the status quo, chartered schools are a permanent part of public education. In the chapters that follow, you will learn how chartered schools benefit students across the country and have provided parents the peace of mind they seek. You will also gain an understanding of why chartered schools are necessary to fulfill the educational social contract, are worthy of respect and protection, and should be provided the resources and support to improve and grow.