Magna charter? A report card on school reform in 1995

Policy Review, Fall 1995 by Finn, Chester E Jr, Ravitch, Diane

* They place local school boards in sole charge of granting charters. (Wyoming, Louisiana, and Texas have recently enacted such laws.) Though such a limitation is invariably a key political goal of school board lobbyists, it can be fatal for charter schools, because the uniform policies of a benighted local board and risk-averse superintendent are usually what charter-seekers are keenest to escape. That is why strong charter laws either lodge the authority to issue charters with a different entity (such as a state superintendent or state board) or--better yet--create multiple windows or appeal mechanisms so that no single entity has the absolute power to deny a charter application. In Michigan and Minnesota, state universities have the authority to issue charters. In Arizona, besides vesting this authority in both local and state school boards, the legislature created a new "charter school" board exclusively for this purpose.

* They neglect to exempt charter schools from enough of the statutes, regulations, and contractual provisions that burden conventional schools. Thus, the charter school is not truly free to chart its own course. The whole point of such a school, after all, is to gain autonomy of action in return for accountability for results. The only regulations that charter schools should be expected to comply with are those governing health and safety and protections against racial discrimination. But many states leave numerous other rules in place. If a state still requires that U.S. history be taught in the 11th grade, that a school's pupil-teacher ratio cannot exceed 25:1, that 40 minutes a day must be spent on math, that certain textbooks must be purchased, and if there is no respite from seniority rules, salary schedules, or tenure requirements, then we see little point in calling an entity so regulated a "charter school." Such a charter is unlikely to be worth the paper it is printed on--and few will go to the bother of seeking such a document.

* Why have so many states created these Potemkin charter programs? The explanation, of course, has to do with power and politics, catalyzed by the education establishment's fierce resistance to changes that threaten its monopoly. Though many teachers and principals crave opportunities to "opt out" of the system and run their own schools without the incessant oversight, time-wasting regulations, and innumerable mandates of the bureaucracy, their professional organizations seldom see it this way. Thus teachers unions, school-board associations, and superintendents, if they cannot defeat the charter bill altogether, generally do their utmost to weaken it. So do other advocacy groups--for example, special education--whose stock-in-trade is rule-bound uniformity rather than diversity. In fact, the Southwest Regional Laboratory recently leveled a novel criticism: that charter schools--precisely because many of them demand a high degree of parent involvement--are unfair to children with bad parents!

* Obtaining a charter does not end the hazards that await these schools. Most also encounter practical problems when they first launch. One perennial challenge is finding a place to operate a charter school. To our knowledge, no state provides charter operators with buildings or capital financing. Though this is no huge burden for existing schools that convert to charter status, it poses a great obstacle to the creation of new charter schools. Another problem is that many charter school founders and managers have little prior experience in matters such as financial management, purchasing, and marketing.