Charting a Fair Course for the Charters

Charter schools have been getting a ton of attention recently. Due to the clear messages the Obama administration is sending in their favor (the Race to the Top budget includes $490 million specifically to expand the charter school system), states are upping their charter school limits to increase the likelihood of grabbing federal dollars. Since Race to the Top is designed to reward states for innovation in education, this is an enormous plug for charter schools; it basically indicates that the Department of Education thinks the flexibility and autonomy given to charters is a straight shot to reform.

Tennessee has upped the charter limits to 90. In Illinois, it's now 120. In Louisiana, they've done away with the limit entirely. In Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick just passed some hefty education legislation that will, among other things, double the number of charter schools in the lowest-performing districts.

And it’s not just states, but also students and parents, who are rooting for the charter system. The Center for Education Reform just released the Annual Survey of America's Charter Schools 2010 which reports that waiting lists for charters are gigantic -- an average of 239 students are waiting to enter each charter across the country, with an estimated 40,000 students on waitlists in the state of Texas alone and 8,000 in the city of Boston.

Nevertheless, the benefits of charters remain hotly contested. While at first it seemed that many of the large schools closing in New York City would reopen as small charters -- especially since a bill was on the table that would double the current state limit of 200 -- the New York legislature reached a stalemate and nothing changed. Much of the opposition came from the state teachers' union, who proposed caveats such as requiring community approval before a charter school could move into a traditional school building or mandating that charters make efforts to attract high-needs students. (These things seem awfully legitimate, and yet they created enough controversy to stall the entire bill.)

Some people argue that opposition to charters is a step backward, since charter schools help foster educational innovation and school choice for under-served students. Others maintain that charter school performance is a mixed bag -- even by the numbers, since recent studies don't show consistent leaps in charter student achievement -- and we should stop making the system look like a panacea.

It does seem odd that some publicly-funded schools enjoy certain freedoms while other publicly-funded schools don't. And yet, why stall the high-energy go-getters from revamping education from the ground up?

Photo credit: elemenous