Charter districts: when an entire district goes charter, do benefits follow? A study casts doubts

School Administrator, June, 2002 by Anne Turnbaugh Lockwood

These new connections, they told us, resulted both from the process of going charter--which often required an actual community vote--and community investment in the outcome.

In California, for example, the only charter districts are small and rural, rooted in tradition. In these districts, parents were committed to local control--so committed, in fact, that the presence of a school board alone did not seem sufficient to community members.

State mandates, parents believed, were a top-down approach to student learning, and they didn't like it. Overall, they saw little merit in a state approach that didn't seem to consider what local teachers and parents believed most effective with their children.

Chartering these five small districts in California brought tangible benefits, according to their superintendents. Suddenly these districts could choose their own textbooks and select their own curricula. And although whole language was endorsed by the state, if parents wanted a phonics approach, districts could accommodate and modify their curriculum accordingly.

Finally, increased budget flexibility meant that superintendents and principals had more leeway in deciding exactly how monies would be spent. This leeway meant that staff could be allocated in imaginative ways, resulting in a better match of instructional services to student needs.

Mark Ford, superintendent of the Kingsburg, Calif., Elementary School District, witnessed most of the district's conversion to charter status, which occurred in 1996 under a previous superintendent. Ford believes that the fact that 60 to 70 percent of his students perform at grade level may be a result of the district choosing its own curricula and teaching methods.

And Ford does point to increased speed when launching a new program or initiative. "You just move," he says. "You don't wait."

At the same time, he pointed out that the district could take its freedom much further than it had, something he continues to advocate.

But the Kingsburg district, like the other small rural California charter districts, did not have to negotiate with teacher or other staff unions-something their charter district peers in other states still had to do. As Ford stated with conviction, "We've never had unions and we never will."

Another California charter district superintendent, Dale Campbell, sees tangible positive outcomes that have resulted from going charter. Campbell, superintendent of the Delta View Elementary School District in Hanford, Calif., points to increased parental involvement, improved student attendance and the flexibility to hire more part-time teachers.

Campbell tempers his enthusiasm about the future of larger districts gaining charter status, predicting difficulty for larger systems because of the legislative requirements that must be satisfied in states that allow charter districts to operate. In California, votes of approval from at least 50 percent of a district's teachers are required before the state will consider an application for charter status.