Everyone agrees that the weak performance of U.S. urban education poses a national crisis. Far too many low income and minority youngsters attend bad schools where they learn too little, are sometimes in danger and are understandably inclined to drop out.
Yet not everyone appreciates the contribution that charter schools can make to easing the urban-education crisis. To the contrary. In hundreds of American cities, school leaders shun the charter option and, in many of these places, have joined the crusade to stamp it out.
Yet charter schools contribute in three ways to the reform of urban education.
First and most obviously, they provide viable educational alternatives - one might even say refuges - for children otherwise trapped in bad public schools and unable to afford private schools. For example, Boston's Academy of the Pacific Rim charter school is the third-highest-scoring secondary school in the city on the 8th grade state proficiency tests - and the two schools ahead of it are selective-admission "exam schools."
The right of low-income children to attend charters in place of chronically underperforming public schools is codified in the No Child Left Behind Act. It was also recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the recent Cleveland voucher case. And we know that most charters are disproportionately attended by poor and minority youngsters.
Second, the competition posed by charter schools may stimulate improvement in the regular public school system. We know that monopolies are loath to change and that competition is good for them and their clients. By making them more consumer-sensitive, it causes them to become more productive and effective. Kenneth Wong and Caroline Hoxby are but two of the scholars who find that charters tend to induce positive change in public school systems, and that the more there are, the more competition is triggered and the more improvement results. Dayton, Ohio is but one of the places where we can see this happening today.
Third, foresighted urban school systems can harness the charter option as a source of innovation and opportunity for themselves. Because charters are free from some of the regulatory and collective bargaining constraints that retard change in large school systems, they can do things differently. Because they're new schools, they are not burdened with the habits and traditions of old ones. Some school systems have recognized this window and have created charter or near-charter schools as a way of diversifying their education offerings and, sometimes, as a sort of lab in which new approaches can be tried and worthy experiments undertaken - experiments that, if successful, may be infused into the larger school system.
The first and second of these connections - the creation of viable alternatives for children and the salubrious effects of competition - are unwelcome to most urban school systems. They may be good for students, families and communities, but they're painful from the standpoint of school systems, which instead take steps to prevent or minimize them. That is the normal reaction of any monopoly to the onset of competition. It fears loss of market share so it strikes back.
We've seen plenty of that across America as school-system leaders join the army that's trying to halt the charter movement. Perhaps this is best analogized to a child's reaction to the pediatrician's syringe: it's good for you even though it hurts. The injection may cause you to hate the doctor but it also makes you get well. There is mounting research evidence that charter schools are in fact offering education havens for children and parents, places that are small, safe and personal, and often (though not always) places where greater academic gains are being made than in conventional public schools. There is also mounting evidence that the presence of competition stimulates positive change in traditional school systems. The problem is that, because school systems don't like to change, they deny that charters are good for them even when it's true.
I watch these developments with particular care in Ohio, a state with as violent an anti-charter backlash as anywhere in the land - and where urban education is as much in need of reforming as anywhere in the land. The Buckeye State has seen its full measure of negative reactions by school system leaders to connections #1 and #2, even though they may be doing great good for children. What we have not yet seen much of in Ohio is connection #3, the deliberate use of the charter opportunity by school systems themselves as a way to create alternatives, innovate and pioneer.
Some occurred in Cincinnati, where former Superintendent Steve Adamowski spearheaded the creation of several charters within the system. There is a lone example in Dayton, the promising "World of Wonder" conversion charter school. But not much else. Mention charter schools to most Ohio superintendents and school board members and they see red.
Look further afield, however, and we can see urban districts exploiting the charter opportunity. Houston (which just won the first Broad Foundation prize for progress in urban education) has developed dozens of charters within the system and proudly describes this arrangement as follows: "In keeping with its commitment to offering the young people of Houston the best possible education, HISD initiated a system of highly successful charter schools. They range from full-fledged, separate campuses to specialized 'school-within-a-school' programs. Each targets particular learning needs and offers unique instructional opportunities, including dual-language primary learning and multicultural studies. HISD charter schools offer students new approaches to education, yet they benefit from the considerable support services that HISD can supply (online at http://dept.houstonisd.org/charterschools)."
Chicago's public schools have cooperated in creating the maximum number of charters permitted under Illinois law. Tampa and Miami are making imaginative use of the charter option as part of their overall education plans and view charters as legitimate alternatives for families. (See, for example, http://choice.dadeschools.net/Charter/index.html.)
Boston has developed its own charter-like "pilot schools" and Superintendent Tom Payzant has told his team that charters are there to stay and they'd best learn to compete successfully with them. A dozen imaginative charter schools have been started in Oakland as part of a purposeful education reform strategy spearheaded by Mayor (and former California governor) Jerry Brown. San Diego superintendent Alan Bersin has made charters a purposeful part of his own education reform efforts, including a semi-charter conversion high school designed to function under the district umbrella. Colorado Springs has similarly figured out how to use its state's charter law to advance some of the system's own education reform ideas. (You can access the charter school websites through the school system's site. Go to http://www.cssd11.k12.co.us/schools/community_prep.htm, for example, and see a photo of Colorado Springs superintendent Norman Ridder speaking at the graduation of Community Prep Charter School.)
In sum, there is no necessary conflict between charter schools and urban school reform. To the contrary, they can be complementary. A number of American cities are proving it. What is needed to make it work that way is the will, the vision and the leadership. What's needed, above all, is a focus on the interests of children rather than adults.
