Finishing touches: More than a quarter of all public schools in Arizona are now charter schools. Some districts have lost more than 20 percent of their students to charters. Guess who's concerned? - Forum

Education Next, Winter, 2001 by Robert Maranto

The effects of competition in Arizona have been muted at least partly by the fact that Arizona's public school enrollment grew by roughly 20,000 students each year through the mid-1990s, dwarfing the number taken away by charters. Indeed, some Arizona education officials suggest that charter schools enable district schools to manage their growth. In addition, many charters serve the at-risk students who district schools are more than happy to see leave. District schools also tend to ignore some charters simply because some charters are not very good. Finally, a few charter schools offer curricula so unusual that school boards are reluctant to copy them for fear of controversy. A proposal in the early 1990s to create a Waldorf magnet school in Flagstaff offended organized groups of parents and teachers who saw Waldorf curricula as religious or just flaky. Flagstaff and Sedona now have Waldorf charter schools, and local districts have made no effort to compete with them.

Nevertheless, when we conducted a survey asking long-serving teachers to rate their schools on a number of criteria in the spring of 1998 compared with the spring of 1995 (immediately before charter schools opened in Arizona), the results showed clear perceptions of improvement since the advent of charter competition, with the greatest gains in the districts with the most charter schools. Surveys of teachers in Nevada, where there were no charter schools, showed no improvement in teachers' perceptions of their districts. Further interviews and fieldwork suggest that the Arizona districts hit hardest by competition react in the following ways:

* Improved customer service. The Roosevelt district, an inner-city district in Phoenix that was hit hard by charters, sent letters to local charter parents asking why they had left district schools and explaining how the district would serve them better. Teachers and administrators in the nearby Isaac district visited parents in their homes. The largest district in the state, Mesa Unified, responded with particular vigor. Mesa sends policy staff members to the state department of education to study charter proposals, checking up on the competition. Since 1996, Mesa has conducted customer-service training for staff, developed a,, Red Carpet Treatment" for reintegrating charter parents into district schools, and expanded all-day kindergarten. Mesa officials initially denied, but later confirmed, that their actions were motivated by competition from charters.

* Advertising. The Mesa, Kyrene, Tempe, and Madison school districts are among those with active advertising campaigns aimed at enticing students from charter schools and from other school districts. All the district officials interviewed felt that charter schools had forced district schools to do a better job of communicating their strengths to the public. As one put it: "In some cases the charters are terrific. In other cases there is not a lot of substance but the advertising is there. It may be that we in the [district] schools have substance but are not very good at advertising. Maybe now we will get better at it." A conservative policymaker claims that district schools "starred out advertising their wonderfully high self-esteem and ability to deal with all diversities of people in an open and collegial way for the benefit of mankind." However, in response to competition from charter schools, "Now they're talking about math, Now they're talking about phonics. Now they're talking about reading ability."