This week controversial school choice advocate Betsy DeVos became the new U.S. Secretary of Education. Predictably, advocates of traditional public schools – the main mechanism for educating young people – were collectively aghast at her confirmation. However, charter school camps were both for and against DeVos. Success Academy Charter Schools’ Eva Moskowitz was an early supporter of DeVos while a group of over 100 independent New York City charters opposed her nomination. And many more stayed mum.
This should not be a surprise. There is no unified charter movement, but rather many different actors who see charter schools and the autonomy they promise as a means to an end. In the big charter tent you have liberals, conservatives, and everything in between.
Any credible poll will show that black, brown and low-income families support charter schools. That’s because many communities of color also have long histories of alternative and private schooling in the face of segregated, subpar or no public options. And Betsy DeVos’ likely greater support for charter schools and school choice might help free underserved communities from sometimes weak neighborhood options.
Charter schools can empower communities to control local schools and deliver high quality, culturally responsive programs to our children. Opening a charter school is incredibly hard work, and many of us who have chosen to do so were frustrated by the lack of responsiveness of the traditional public schools and wanted to do something different. Given the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea—we jumped in.
Remembering the Original Intent behind Charters
With that said, school choice is not a panacea. Choice by itself doesn’t necessarily improve quality or equity and may make things worse. There are choosers and non-choosers when it comes to charter schools. And the schools themselves may also start to pick and choose students, sometimes taking the “easy” ones and passing the more challenging kids on.
The federal government has a crucial role in setting some basic ground rules for equity and enforcing them. And because I don’t think we can trust local jurisdictions, those rules need to bend toward justice. Charter school admissions policy, charter authorizer behavior, as well as rules of the game in serving students with special needs or treating “minorities” with equal concern and respect can be influenced by federal spending and rulemaking.
And the Secretary of Education needs to be an advocate for all schools, given the reality that 47 of the roughly 55 million students in the U.S. go to traditional public schools, with three million in charters and over five million in private schools. Nothing Washington does will change those ratios significantly. So the focus needs to be on that largest sector, and remembering, incidentally, the original intent behind charters – that they would act as laboratories to feed best practices into the traditional schools.
New Challenges and Opportunities
As a sector, charters were here before DeVos and will be here after her. And if we sell out our principles or forget who we ultimately serve, the damage will outlast any education secretary.
A rush to create more schools for more schools’ sake is unwise. Inherent in the charter promise of high-quality academic outcomes in exchange for school autonomy is accountability. Equity has to be at the forefront of accountability for the sector to be credible and ethical. Charter schools have had some historical challenges in serving all students. This is a critique that is equally applicable to the traditional public zoned schools or gifted and talented programs and the specialized high schools. Authorizers and the public need to look hard at who is being served and who isn’t and why, with consequences for offenders.
Charter schools are public schools and need to be transparent with the public’s money and authority. I get that not all charters act like public schools, but they are and they should. And to build and maintain public confidence, we need to be transparent and allow for public analysis.
In this new administration, the charter sector faces new challenges and opportunities. But the real question that each school must answer is, are they in this business to serve only students in charter schools and to preserve their survival as a movement, or are they interested in helping all students in the system?
As we know, charters sometimes are accused of not being of the community. If they are to assure their roots in these communities, and the communities’ faith in them as educators and innovators of school models that advance student learning system-wide, they need to pass this final test. Lest short term gain turn to long term ruin.
Dirk Tillotson is Executive Director of Great School Choices. His Guest Urban Agenda column is sponsored by the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 170 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.