Echoing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s sentiments distancing herself from wokeness, a common sentiment among reformers seems to be that the bipartisan education reform era was “craazzy.” Standardized testing pep rallies, the glorified grant writing beauty pageant called Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, guarantees of 100 percent reading proficiency by 2014—maybe we went a little overboard, folks. (Though I’m sympathetic to Mike Petrilli’s Ahab-like insistence that standards-based reform, for all its flaws, really was a net positive.)
After the bipartisan consensus splintered in the late Obama and early Trump years, and with some space to assess the era’s wins and losses, the charter sector remains one of the few reforms of that period that (just about) everyone agrees was a success. They’re popular, they boast real academic advantages over traditional public schools, especially for poor kids, and, through competitive effects, they even improve the outcomes of students in those nearby traditional public schools.
Given their popularity and success, one might be curious how—given the ever-changing landscape of school choice and the recent adoption of education savings accounts (ESAs) across several states—the charter sector is adapting. There are currently 21 ESA programs across 18 states. The expansion of such programs coincides with a recent uptick in homeschooling and microschooling—a trend enhanced by the COVID pandemic.
Typically, reformers have worried that union and Democratic pressure would stifle charters in blue states. Now we have to ask: Can charter schools keep pace with more widely available private alternatives in red states with robust ESA programs?
A new report from AEI’s Conservative Education Reform Network offers a preview of the answer. Ian Kingsbury and David T. Marshall surveyed 285 charter leaders across three states—Arizona, Florida, and Utah—with mature ESA programs to get a better sense of enrollment impacts on charter schools associated with the competing private school options in those states.
Their data indicate that the spread of ESAs and popularity of alternative options may indeed be placing strain on traditional charter schools in jurisdictions such as these that have both. In particular, charter schools are now “forced to compete against nimble, less-regulated ESA-funded providers while operating under heavier compliance and resource constraints than traditional districts are.”
Their survey, though narrow in scope, reveals that charter schools are in fact experiencing student withdrawals in Arizona, Florida, and Utah. For example, in Arizona, where the universal ESA has been in place the longest, “nearly half of leaders indicated that students had already left their schools to use ESA funds,” with reported withdrawals ranging from a single student to dozens or even hundreds in larger schools. On surveys, 58 percent of Arizona respondents anticipated that ESAs would decrease their enrollment. Whether their predictions and worries prove true is yet to be seen, but insiders and practitioners are feeling competitive pressure.
When asked about funding for their schools, charter leaders indicated frustration with high compliance costs. While ESA programs typically provide lower per-pupil funds, charter monies are eaten up to accommodate oversight from authorizers, maintenance and overhead costs, and detailed reporting.
The leaders surveyed argued that, particularly due to ESAs altering the competitive landscape of schooling options, there is a heightened need for reforms targeted at reducing bureaucracy within the public sector. While charters already enjoy greater operational autonomy than traditional public schools, the sector still faces regulations that make it difficult to compete with comparatively flexible private options. To help them compete with ESAs, the surveyed leaders noted the need for funding equity, getting rid of duplicative reporting requirements, facilities and transportation support, and streamlining special education paperwork.
Most of them emphasized that they’re more interested in reforming charter schools to allow them to better compete with ESAs than to abandon the market altogether, noting that charter schools maintain strong reputations and that they provide “appropriate governance, accountability, and oversight.” When asked whether their respective state’s ESA program impacted their likelihood of starting a private alternative, the majority of respondents reported “no effect,” implying that charter leaders still prefer the public option.
ESA-induced competition appears only likely to increase. Coupled with the anticipated demographic cliff and new Education Freedom Tax Credit, traditional public and charter schools seem positioned for continuing enrollment declines unless changes are made to retain children in these classrooms.
Lurking behind this report is a more fundamental question: Should charter schools even continue to exist? Or should reformers let creative destruction work and replace an antiquated model with the new era of ESAs?
As those in the survey identified, there are comparative advantages to charter schools: They serve students with special needs; accountability regimes and public oversight guarantee at least a floor of quality; they’re replicable and scalable; and without tuition, they seem more accessible to families. A strong education marketplace requires many options—public, private, and charter. Moreover, if the sector dies with a whimper, those within it suggest that it will come through overregulation, not its own failures.
To let charter schools wither away would be a mistake. To preserve the distinctive strengths of charters, conservatives can work to trim needless regulation, streamline authorization processes, and lift enrollment caps. To do otherwise is to risk letting one of the primary successes of the bipartisan education reform movement become just another failure.
