The Case Against Charter Schools

School Administrator, May, 2001 by Bruno V. Manno

This is a legitimate concern in some charter schools. But the weight of evidence pushes toward the opposite conclusion: Many charters are conscientiously trying to serve more than their share of difficult-to-educate children. Far from creaming, they often receive many disadvantaged, troubled or at-risk youth, sometimes pointed in their direction by regular schools for whom these youngsters have become problems.

There are three starting points for examining what educational equity denotes within and across schools. It can mean a balanced distribution of students by race and socioeconomic background; an equal distribution of resources, especially money; and high performance standards for all students who are educated to those standards.

The U.S. Department of Education's charter school reports provide ample information on equity as a balanced distribution of students. They indicate charters serve a higher proportion of minority students than all U.S. public schools (51.8 percent vs. 41 percent) and have a slightly higher percentage of poor kids as determined by students eligible for the federal lunch program (38.7 percent vs. 37.3 percent) They enroll a smaller percentage of special education students (8.4 percent vs. 11.3 percent). Nearly one in four charter schools was founded to serve a special population.

These data vary by state and district. Charter schools in six of the 13 states that had 20 or more charter schools enrolled at least 20 percent more nonwhite students than all public schools in those states. When comparing charter schools and their surrounding districts, one finds 69 percent of charters are not distinct from the district regarding percentage of nonwhite students: 17 percent have a higher percentage of students of color than surrounding districts, and 14 percent had a lower percentage of students of color than the surrounding districts.

Admittedly, some charter schools are attended mostly by white, upper-middle class youngsters, but this is more apt to result from the schools' location and thrust of their educational programs than from discriminatory admission practices.

In the same vein, many charters that are serious about academic standards and behavioral norms may counsel out, suspend or expel youngsters who cannot or will not comply--precisely the impulse that is leading more public school systems to create alternative schools for disruptive students.

The evidence for equity as an equal distribution of resources leads to a conclusion seldom reached by those who claim to be advocates for school equity: charter schools and their students are subject to a two-fold inequity. Many schools don't receive the same per pupil allocations that district schoolchildren receive and few schools receive any state or district money for capital expenditures.

Finally, a U.S. Department of Education report on charter school accountability provides strong evidence to support the claim that charter schools are serious about having high standards for all their youngsters and about being held accountable for making sure students master these standards. Another federal report on student achievement in charters presents convincing evidence of these schools' success in helping disadvantaged students learn to high standards. But it's too early to reach any definitive conclusions about whether the charter strategy can be a core mechanism for educating all students, especially at-risk youngsters, to high standards.