8 November 2004
Bernadette Medige
The Privatization of Public Education, part 3: How Charter School Legislation Undermines Public Education
(This is a reposting. The original posting of this article disappeared from the server)
The charter school debate is beginning to heat up, due largely to the Board of Education’s Renaissance Project Schools Initiative. With every seat on the Board being up for grabs this Tuesday, which only happens once every 15 years, charter schools are the hot campaign issue. We need to get past the rhetoric of charter schools and look at the reality of some issues. For brevity as well as to make a point, I will refer to traditional public schools as simply public schools, and charter schools as charter schools.
The whole idea behind charter schools is to remove them from the bureaucratic constraints of the bureaucracy and create competition for public schools, and make them accountable by the ability to revoke the charter of a failing school. However, the playing field is anything but level. There are idiosyncrasies in the charter laws and funding mechanisms that make them financially dependent on the bureaucracy. If in a market-driven system success of one entity requires failure of another, the charter legislation sets up the public schools for failure in several ways. Here are some of them:
“Charter School” is not synonymous with “good”.
It is misleading to consider “charter schools” in any collective sense. They are each operated privately and independently from one another or the district, even when the district grants the charter. Some are successful and some are not. What constitutes success differs from school to school. Some are innovative and some use old methods. Some have as their mission goals that are not academic. The Brookings Institute reviewed charter schools in ten states and found that children enrolled at charter schools were performing on average a year to a year and a half behind public school students. The Charter school resource organization, Center for Education Reform (CER), says the opposite. The reality is, broken down school by school, there is great disparity in test scores among charter schools, just as there is among public schools. Test scores are not a reliable measure of outcome and may not be relevant to the goals of a school. And education management organizations Edison and Sabis have developed their own tests for measuring gains, which can’t be used to compare results with other schools.
What is successful is the charter school lobby. Funded by the likes of the Walton Family, Microsoft co-founder and Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen, public schools have little chance to compete on the public relations front.
Public school funding takes a back seat to charter school funding.
Albany, for the 20th straight year, has not been able to pass a budget on time. Buffalo is a dependent district, which means the schools can’t levy school taxes but must make do with whatever financing the city and state governments decide. Buffalo needs to create a budget for the next school year with no knowledge of what is coming. However, the charter schools’ funding is already locked in. At least they can go ahead and make plans without disruption of service next year, but the public schools have no such comfort. Their ability to plan is limited by not knowing how much money they will get, how many students will leave for charter schools, or how many students will enter the system from private and parochial schools adding to the financial burden of the district. But when a charter schools closes, the district is expected to be able to immediately absorb those kids back into the district. If a public school must close for any reason, a charter school in the neighborhood is not obligated to reabsorb them; they must apply and wait for a lottery and hope.
In two of the past three years, when the state finally passed a budget after the start of the school year, Buffalo faced deeper than expected cuts from the state, forcing the layoff hundreds of teachers. Three years ago the cut was 5% across the board, and again this year it was 10%. Olmsted was further caught off guard when 30 students left for a new charter one year; there was no mechanism to know if children were leaving and how many. That was the year the public schools were forced to make 5% cuts after the school year started but the charters refused to take the same hit. That was the year the Olmsted lost their beloved Spanish teacher, leaving many kids literally in tears.
As Buffalo moves towards a weighted funding formula, one that replaces a flat per-pupil rate in recognition that all children don’t cost the same to educate, what will this do to the average APO? As the public schools become increasingly filled with children with special needs, will this inadvertently jack up the money the charter schools are entitled to regardless of their ability or willingness (or lack of both) to service these very children?
Buffalo has no business plan to implement this initiative, but then again, whatever business plan was in place stands to be irrelevant once Albany passes its budget.
Children moving to charter schools don’t save the district any money.
When children leave a public school, the money follows them. The school they left still has not reduction in overhead costs. Children do not leave a single grade in a single school in large enough numbers to be able to reduce teaching staff. When Enterprise Charter School, the first district-sponsored schools, opened with over 400 students, not a single teaching position could be cut from the public schools, Superintendent Marion Canedo recently informed a group of perspective Board of Education candidates at a YWCA training..
Many new students who would otherwise go to private schools enter the system to attend charter schools, adding costs to the district. If you offer a private school education without charging tuition, why wouldn’t they? In Trenton, N.J. it was estimated that 30% of charter school students came from parochial schools, and the parochial schools suffered.
Charter schools don’t do more with less.
According to the New York State School Boards Association, charter schools get 100 per cent of the approved operating expense (APO) per pupil, a number based on the previous year’s average of what a district spent on all students. Since high schools students are most expensive to educate and we haven’t seen our first charter high school open yet, more money moves with children enrolled at elementary charter schools than elementary public schools. The district is also obligated to augment this for special education students, either by providing the services or money to pay for them, but only if the charter school welcomes them.
Charter school advocates like to say they only get a percentage of the per-pupil expenditures, which misleading. What is held back is what they are not eligible for – money for transportation, facilities and debt service, all things that have nothing to do with curriculum or teaching methods.
Still, the UCLA Charter School Study found that charter schools really can’t survive just on the per-pupil APO, but rely “heavily on supplemental private resources.” Up to 40 percent of charter schools’ budgets come from private sources. The authors came to view charter school reform as “the forefront of efforts to privatize public education, as the reform forces these schools to rely on private funds.” In this light, it looks increasingly like a voucher system to me.
While it is illegal to charge parents tuition or require them to volunteer at charter schools in New York, it is expected that parents will contribute time and resources to the school. It is against the law to require that they do, but there is a loophole: kicking out kids under the pretext that the parents don’t subscribe to the philosophy of the school. Charter schools may use this to cherry pick parents, and even recruit politically and financially connected people to sit on boards of directors who will be able to secure substantial private funds, pushing the schools further into the private sector. If we had access to the per-pupil spending when it included private money, coupled with in-kind contributions from professional parents, things would look very different.
Finally, because they are not obligated to educate the most expensive kids to teach, it follows that charter schools have the least expensive students. By virtue that they have parents who availed themselves of this resource, they are also more likely to have stable and supportive family environments that also make a difference, not to mention the means to provide their own transportation.
The public perception that schools can do more with less money fuels the desire to cut spending on education. Conservatives who complain of high taxes and throwing good money after bad in the public schools point to charter schools as proof that we can educate our children more cheaply if we only used a free-market business model. That for-profit EMOs are able to make money off of charter schools demonstrates that whether the bureaucracy is public or private, a good chunk of money never makes it to the classroom. My vote is that the public bureaucracy is more accountable. Not that it’s without flaws, but the private sector has not distinguished itself lately. A glaring example is the privatization of healthcare. As Medicare/Medicaid are being contracted out to private HMOs, doctors are being driven of practice by low reimbursements and frustration over the bottom line taking priority over their professional judgment. A democratically elected democracy is more likely to reflect the needs of the most people, not the most money that can be made off of them.
Charter schools reject children with special needs, and the city is left with the most expensive kids to teach.
Even though the district is responsible for providing services to children with special needs in charter schools, in a market-driven system of charter schools there is a definite disincentive to be inclusive: it keeps their average test scores high, good P.R. for charter schools. The concurrent drop in the average scores of public schools is blamed on the failure of public education – bad P.R. for public schools – but I have never seen the higher percentage of disabled children factored in. When test scores are released, the data make no distinctions about whom the schools is serving, which makes both public and charter schools serving these look like they are failing.
In every single one of the many studies I have read about charter schools, it has been found that they discriminate against children with special needs. Since I have been writing and speaking about charter schools, several parents have come forward to tell their stories of being “counseled out” of charter schools in Buffalo, which is illegal. Most of the children in question had mild disabilities, which in no way put them at academic risk. Charter schools are not obligated to provide self-contained classrooms for children who need them. With city-sponsored charter schools, a child’s committee on special education may well steer parents away from charters as well, given that services are better in the public schools. The district is responsible for providing these services anyway, so wouldn’t it be more cost-effective to keep them out of charters?
As charter schools proliferate, the public schools are faced with a greater concentration of children who require special education. You cannot call charter schools “public” if they are privately run and allowed to exclude some children.
City granted charter schools are likely to divert attention and other kinds of support from the public schools.
While the public schools bear the burden of the increasing concentration of children with special needs, the Board of Education is already diverting attention by plowing through charter school applications. The UCLA Charter School Study researched ten diverse districts in California, where all charters are district-granted. They found that charter schools had varying degrees of autonomy from or dependence on support from the district, some relying heavily on the expertise of the very bureaucrats they exist to bypass. (Others created bureaucracies within themselves.) They found in some cases that politically connected charter schools were able to secure additional funds from the district. Others relied heavily on administrative assistance. At least one school board member and charter school supporter was found to spend a wildly disproportionate amount of time on charter schools than public schools. It is not difficult to imagine what a conflict of interest it would be for Chris Jacobs, who sits on the board of two charter schools, to be elected to the Board of Education.
The study also questioned oversight and accountability, concluding with doubts that school boards granting charters would have the gumption to revoke charters, especially when politically connected people are involved.
Charter schools rely on the very bureaucracy they exist to reject
Superintendent Marion Canedo explained at a recent YWCA training for perspective school board candidates that funding comes from so many sources and programs, each requiring an administrator to oversee the particular line of funding, and they are not able to cut any more administrative positions without losing a funding source. In other words, the bureaucracy that the district can’t reduce exists to bring in monies that also fund charter schools. Charter schools ability to be innovative is due to freedom from bureaucracy, but they simultaneously enjoy the money it brings while the school district suffers from the public perception that it is an outdated, heavily bureaucratic entity, an accusation they cannot fix.
Ironically, Relative to traditional public schools, charter schools have a larger share of staff classified as central administration or campus administration staff. This is at least partly due to the relative size of each school. Charters average 181 students, while traditional public school districts average 3,810 students. Economies of scale in administrative services allow larger districts to spread administrative costs over a larger number of students and staff, hence lowering the proportion of dollars and staff positions going to administration in larger units.
Charter School legislation undermines the teaching profession
While the No Child Left Behind Act requires that teachers achieve the highest credentialing possible, which in New York means certification in the area he or she teaches, it simultaneously provides economic and political support charter schools, which allow some teachers to be uncertified, which in New York is up to 30%. Regardless of what one’s position is on alternate credentials, it is unfair to have opposite expectations public and charter schools. In Texas, charter schools don’t require certification in charter schools at all. Many have no advanced degrees. Teacher turnover is over 55% (versus 15% in public schools), oversight is bad, not enough charters are revoked, and few are successful.
Schools with fewer than 250 students are under no obligation to honor collective bargaining agreements, which means locally 6 of the 11 charter schools are exempt. This is one way costs are kept down. Most recognize it as union busting. Teachers unions are, ironically, responsible for limits in class size, a big reason parents may choose a charter that offers smaller classes, which not all do. Unionized districts outperform non-unionized ones. Charter schools may use less experienced teachers, pay them less for more hours, and expect them to do more than teach. The result is high teacher turnover. But if a pro-charter organization can use misleading statements that they are getting better results for less money while being inclusive by using uncertified teachers, it makes teachers look worse. When Education Secretary Paige calls teachers “terrorists” it confirms that undermining teachers and teachers unions is part of the national education agenda.
Like physicians, teachers will be driven out of the profession.
Market-driven school systems create separate and unequal schools
Studies on charter schools in several states state that the demographics of students in charters are proportionate to the district. By using collective data of all the charter schools in a district, it looks equitable. The numbers broken down into individual schools paint a radically different picture. Black, white, affluent, poor and bilingual students go to separate schools. If special education students are represented, odds are they are at a school designed for them. Florence Johnson, Ferry District member and at-large candidate, stated recently at a meet the candidates night at the Crane Library that the South Buffalo Charter School is virtually all white, with Tapestry running a close second at 94%. King Urban is all black. Education is rapidly becoming separate and unequal. “Rectifying the tendency of choice programs to increase social stratification will likely require more governmental intervention rather than less” conclude Ellmore and Fuller. In their book, Who Chooses, Who Loses?
The UCLA study found that charter schools varied wildly in their ability to attract money and parents who could offer academic, financial, political and in-kind support, and that such schools had more choice over who attends, rather than vice-versa. Parents of students at these schools were more educated and donated their professional services. In Buffalo, the Tapestry Charter School is well known due to its student body having among its parents a high-profile columnist, a state assemblyman on the forefront of charter legislation, attorneys and educators. Other charter schools with parents who were not involved relied on already overburdened teachers to write grants, which are not always renewed. Charter schools attended by poor students were more likely to have parents cleaning bathrooms.
My second article in this series, “Segregation, Desegregation and Resegregation” dealt with this in depth. I would like to add the comment here that I have heard many people complain that the desegregation order was the beginning of the decline of the Buffalo Public Schools and the beginning of a two-tiered system that the magnet system became. To this I respond: 1. No court ordered the white flight. 2. The decline of the schools was caused by the failure to fully implement the magnet program. Every school was meant to have a magnet component. Ironically, this would have offered more choices for families without sacrificing diversity, but someone dropped the ball. 3. As for the expense of busing, that was federally funded as the direct result of the federal court order.
Beliefs that charter schools would be a key to revitalizing the city by bringing in middle class families, restoring the tax base are tantamount to luring them back with the “choice” to attend segregated schools, taking a big step backwards and further institutionalizing racism, this time being able to sidestep culpability. This is not progress.
State Regents have called the Renaissance Project Schools Initiative a union busting tactic that will undermine public education, and expressed concerns that the public schools stand to lose as much as the charters will gain. A charter system will offer an even more stratified school system, a more divided city, and not solve the real reason for the erosion of the tax base: Poverty, and the failure to address the underlying causes. Racism, classism, cronyism, and above all poor leadership
Candidates who oppose charter schools, or at least recognize the flaws:
At-large candidate James E. Payne said he neither "could, nor would, endorse or support any form of charter school whatsoever." and "that he wouldn't support a charter even if his sister were principal."
Vivian Evans in the East District
Kevin Lafferty in the Park District has been probably the most outspoken candidate.
Ferry District Candidate Betty Jean Grant said suggested charters were like an "unwanted, unplanned pregnancy." but favors state-sponsored charters.
At-Large Candidate Florence Johnson, who opposed charter schools initially, concedes that the city granting the charters at least gives us oversight.
At-large candidates Catherine Collins have not taken a firm stand, but she wowed me at a meet-the-candidates night. She is articulate, experienced and has a solid plan to engage parents in public schools. Her eyes are wide open to the possible deleterious effects on the public schools.
other articles in this series by Bernadette Meddige:
Part 1:The Privatization of Public Education (19 April 2003)
Part 2: Segregation, Desegregation, Resegregation (2 May 2003)
Part 3: How Charter School Legislation Undermines Public Education
Part 4: The Conservative Agenda (1 September 2004)
Part 5: The Corporate Agenda (8 November 2004)
Copyright 2004 by Buffalo Report, Inc.