Institute Forum
This is Not Your Mom and Pop's Charter School
As the number of students attending charter schools across the U.S. continues to grow, leaders of these independent public schools are drawing important lessons that will be key to addressing lingering challenges, according to experts who spoke at a Rockefeller Institute of Government Public Policy Forum on June 10.
The forum, the fourth in a series held at the Institute, featured Chester E. Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Douglas Lemov, managing director of Uncommon Schools — a New York-based non-profit charter management organization (CMO) that launched and manages 16 charters schools throughout New York. (A third invited guest, Michele Bodden of the United Federation of Teachers Charter School in Brooklyn, was unable to attend.)
Finn described eight “sobering” developments that concern him as he considers the future of charter schools nationally:
- Simply opening as many charter schools as possible is not the answer. Too many are mediocre.
- State policymakers have not delivered the true freedom and adequate funding required to help charter schools deliver results.
- The marketplace for charter schools has not worked as expected, and schools end up competing on grounds other than quality.
- Some early assumptions about how the charter sector would work — including how easily an underperforming school could be shut down — have turned out to be wrong.
- Political opposition has not gone away and has in some cases intensified.
- Too many individuals or organizations who started charter schools should not have — either because they didn’t know what they were doing, or because they were motivated by greed.
- There has been too little attention paid to authorizers’ responsibilities and their competency to carry them out. Acknowledging a brewing controversy in New York, Finn opined that having just one authorizer in a state is “a very bad idea” because applicants risk having the door slammed in their face for political rather than substantive reasons.
- There has been far too little healthy interaction between charter schools and district schools.
Lemov presented statistics showing that, overall, New York charter schools posted higher student proficiency rates on the 2009 fourth-grade English test than traditional public schools serving the same percentage of poor students.
“The New York picture is considerably brighter than the national picture,” Finn said. “Still, I remain a charter school enthusiast.”
He noted five positive developments:
- The recent national emphasis on data and standards-based accountability has been healthy for charter schools and has played to their strengths.
- CMOs and other charter-school networks have generated some effective school designs and national school “brands” that are being replicated successfully.
- Charter schools have proven flexible enough to accommodate a wide array of needs — including those of disabled children and varied ethnic and immigrant groups — and to respond to innovations such as virtual schooling.
- States have adopted better practices for authorizing charter schools.
- In some communities — such as New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Albany, N.Y. — charter schools have developed into full-scale alternative public education systems.
Lemov offered insights as to why CMOs — as opposed to individual "mom and pop" charter schools that are not part of a network —have been particularly effective at raising student achievement.
“CMOs foster a culture of internal competition and internal accountability,” he said, which spurs school leaders to constantly look for ways to improve and outperform other schools in the network. A well-known CMO brand can also help attract talented teachers and school leaders, he added. CMOs provide teacher training and shoulder many of the business tasks that district offices typically perform for traditional public school, leaving schools to focus on educating students.
“A great idea is not sufficient,” Lemov said. “Your obsession with the details of everyday management is what makes the difference. Top schools recognize that schools are first and foremost cultures, and that you need cultural solutions along with academic solutions.”
About the Rockefeller Institute of Government
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, conducts fiscal and programmatic research on American state and local governments. It works closely with federal, state, and local government agencies nationally and in New York, and draws on the State University’s rich intellectual resources and on networks of public policy academic experts throughout the country.