From innovation to corporatization

May 27, 2022 Lisa Everitt, Executive Staff Officer, ATA

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The evolution of charter schools in the United States

American historian and scholar Diane Ravitch (2013) wrote that since “the publication in 1983 of a report called A Nation at Risk, federal and state policymakers have searched for policy levers with which to raise academic performance” (p. 10). The report indicated the American way of life and standards of living were threatened. However, A Nation at Risk also unfairly identified the cause of the decline as the failure of public schools and the teaching profession. Subsequently, school improvement became a national conversation, spawning many educational reforms. Among these “improvements” were charter schools.

What are charter schools?

Ray Budde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, and Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, are generally thought of as the originators of charter schools. In 1988, in a speech to the National Press Club, Shanker noted that the reforms introduced following A Nation at Risk had positive as well as negative aspects. Shanker went on to say that the work of educational reform was not complete. He proposed a new and creative collaborative model where “the school district and the teacher union would develop a procedure that would encourage any group of six or more teachers to submit a proposal to create a new school” (p. 12). These schools, sometimes a school within a school, would provide innovative solutions to locally identified issues within the school community. They would be free to experiment and identify solutions, be responsive to students and be based on a collegial model for the teaching profession. Shanker also stated that charter schools were not intended to compete with public schools; instead, they would inform the broader educational community.

While Shanker’s vision for charter schools involved students, teachers, teachers’ unions and school officials working together to help children learn and succeed, charter schools have been co-opted by those who believe that schools should operate like businesses. Ravitch (2013) wrote that neither Budde nor Shanker ever “imagined a charter sector that was nearly 90 per cent non-union or one that in some states presented profit-making opportunities for entrepreneurs” (p. 13). One result of the American free-market approach to charter schools has been that “charter schools became managerial driven organizations rather than a community of professionals as originally envisioned” (Malin and Kerchner 2007, 889). Further, many charter school operators are not education professionals; they are well-connected corporate insiders (Ravitch 2013).

In 1991, Minnesota became the first state to pass legislation enabling charter schools and the first school opened there the next year. By the 2018/19 school year, there were roughly 7,400 charter schools constituting approximately eight per cent of the schools and seven per cent of all students registered in public schools (National Center for Education Statistics 2021). Levin (2018) writes that charter schools exist in 43 states and the District of Columbia and that they “have employed widely different requirements for the establishment, funding, waivers from existing state and local requirements, and sponsorship” (p. 197). Epple, Romano and Zimmer (2015) observe that three types of charter school operators have evolved in the US: education management organizations (EMOs), charter management organizations (CMOs) and free-standing charter schools. EMOs and CMOs “operate multiple schools, the key distinction being that the former is for-profit and the latter non-profit” (Epple, Romano and Zimmer 2015, 4).

The evolution of charter schools in the US has been a massive social experiment, conducted without any initial evidence that they would be an effective means to improve educational outcomes for students. Policymakers and charter operators proclaim that charter schools, which are fully funded using public dollars, are open to all students. However, the truth is less clear.

With the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act by George W. Bush in 2001 and its punishing forms of accountability, including withheld funding for inadequate student test scores, questions emerged about how charter schools recruit students. Welner (2021), along with fellow researcher Mommandi, investigated the application procedures and policies of charter schools and determined there were at least 13 ways that American charter schools operate more like private schools in terms of student access. Among the strategies charter schools use to recruit students are targeted advertising, conditional acceptance, aggressive disciplinary procedures and a requirement that parents volunteer. However, even with the skimming of students and families to the charter system, Epple, Romana and Zimmer (2015) observe that “taken as a whole, the evidence suggests that, accounting for differences in population served, charter schools are not, on average, producing student achievement gains any better than TPSs [traditional public schools]” (pp. 56–57).

For 30 years, charter schools have operated in the US. The results for students are mixed: the results for teachers have been the imposition of a new managerialism and poor working conditions, including poor compensation; and the results for the public have been tainted by scandal. While it is true that Alberta’s charter school evolution has been much different than that of the US, the regulation around Alberta charter schools is loosening, and the current government has incentivized charter schools to expand by removing requirements to open and providing start-up funds. The charter school experiment in Alberta has been largely successful and much less scandalous than the American system, but that is due to the tight regulations that have shaped these schools. If charter schools in Alberta continue to exist, they must be well regulated and monitored to ensure they are good stewards of the public funding they receive and adopt principles of inclusion for all students. We need only peer across the border to see how badly some poorly regulated charter schools have robbed the public, students, families and teachers.

References

Epple, D., Romano, R. and Zimmer, R. 2015. “Charter Schools: A Survey of Research on Their Characteristics and Effectiveness.” Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. www.
nber.org/papers/w21256 (accessed May 6, 2022).

Levin, H.M. 2018. “Charter Schools: Rending or Mending the Nation.” In Choosing Charters: Better Schools or More Segregation?, eds I. C. Rotberg and J. L. Glazer, 195–204. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Also available at https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/rending-or-mending (accessed May 9, 2022). 

Malin, M. H., and Kerchner, C. 2007. “Charter Schools and Collective Bargaining: Compatible Marriage or Illegitimate Relationship?” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 30, no. 3: 885–937.

National Center for Education Statistics. 2021. “Public Charter School Enrollment.” U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences website. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/
coe/indicator/cgb (accessed May 9, 2022). 

Ravitch, D. 2013. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York, NY: Alfred A Knopf.

Shanker, A. 1988. “National Press Club Speech.” Washington, D.C., March 31. http://reuther.wayne.edu/files/64.43.pdf (accessed May 9, 2022).

Welner, K. 2021. “Why Charter Schools Are Not as 'Public' as They Claim to Be.” The Conversation, Sept. 30. https://theconversation.com/why-charter-schools-are-not-as-public-as-they-claim-to-be-168617 (accessed May 9, 2022).

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