Earlier this summer, Education Next published a post by EdChoice’s Robert Enlow and Michael Q. McShane, “School Choice Should Take the Road Less Traveled.” It was not my favorite take, to say the least.
The problem wasn’t so much their argument that private-school choice should be regulated differently than charter schooling. While I would quibble (and quarrel) on some specifics, I can appreciate that the rules for private-school choice should be different from those for charter schools. Otherwise we’d “de-privatize” private schools, and what would be the point of that?
No, what really bothered me was their claim—one I’ve seen many others make—that the charter sector once had great potential for innovation, but because of those dastardly authorizers and other red-tape-loving bureaucrats, charters instead became overly cautious, impeding innovation in a way that has hamstrung and limited the entire charter school movement. Here’s how Enlow and McShane put it:
Charter schools have been a school choice success but a limited one, facing increasing challenges through the years with overregulation and limited growth. Hailed initially as a way to dramatically remake education, particularly urban education, charter schools have been stymied in their impact by an authorizing and regulatory framework that has buried potential operators in the very bureaucratic structures charter schools were created to avoid. The sector has empowered a limited set of unelected functionaries to say no for arbitrary and capricious reasons. And, it has curtailed ways in which schools can experiment and try to educate children differently.
They go on to write that there should be lots more kinds of charter schools, and lots more charter schools overall, but that, by choosing overregulation instead, the charter sector committed “ an own goal, kicked into the wrong net by the very reformers that passionately advocate for charters..”
Jed Wallace, in a great piece for Charter Folk, admits that there is overregulation of charter schools in some states but also argues that that wasn’t an “own goal.” Those regulations were foisted upon the charter sector by opponents bent on containing or killing the sector. In deep-blue states like Wallace’s California, opponents really did insert poison pills into laws and regulations. A major goal of charter advocacy today is rolling back the rising tide of red tape.
But what about states where we see charter schools continuing to grow and succeed—those where policymakers are trying to help, rather than hurt, charters? Are their sectors overregulated, too? And is it true, as Enlow and McShane say, that a set of “unelected functionaries” has been empowered to say no to charter applicants for arbitrary and capricious reasons?
Those are fighting words—a direct attack on charter authorizers of which Fordham is proud to be one: We oversee about a dozen schools on 20 Ohio campuses, all high poverty, mostly urban, with one in the Appalachian region. We get proposals every year for new charter schools, and we have said yes to some and no to many. We’ve also worked to close schools that weren’t performing. Were we doing all of this for arbitrary and capricious reasons? Hardly!
We say no when we make a professional determination that the people proposing a new charter don’t have the expertise or experience to run good schools. The world is full of people with good hearts who have dreams for schools that they want to create, but they don’t have the know-how to do it well. For example, they don’t have a staffer or board member who understands finances. They don’t have a solid strategy for overcoming challenges related to facilities. Maybe they want to start a wonderful elementary school yet have never heard of the science of reading. Those are huge red flags.
We try to stay open-minded. For example, a few years ago, we approved a school that was focused on attracting a socioeconomically and racially diverse population in one of Ohio’s big urban areas. We thought the proposed curriculum was a little too loosey-goosey, but we understood from the founders that they wouldn’t be able to recruit upper-middle-class and White families into their school if they offered a “no excuses” type program. We were willing to give it a try. It didn’t work. It struggled to get enough enrollment, and eventually, they just didn’t have enough students to make the finances work. The school had to close.
Taking some risks is important. And I can imagine that some authorizers have opted to be very risk averse. Maybe they started a few bad schools or faced a scandal and responded by rejecting everything but sure bets.
But is it also true, as Enlow and McShane imply, that there were scads of wonderful (potential) schools out there that authorizers rejected? That, were it not for the regulations (and regulators), the charter sector would be bigger and more innovative today? That does not line up with my experience, nor have I seen any evidence to back that claim.
And as for closing schools, maybe some libertarians think we authorizers are just looking at Excel spreadsheets and pushing a “close” button from far away. That’s not how it works. We know these schools intimately. Our teams spend time in them. We go to their board meetings. We work with their staffs. We interview their students. We know their parents. And guess what? Some schools just aren’t very good. It’s actually really hard to run an effective school. It’s difficult to run a multimillion-dollar nonprofit organization, which is what charter schools are. Some people turn out to be ineffective at managing these complicated enterprises, and some schools just turn out to be bad at teaching children what they need to learn. As an authorizer, we work hard to offer help, advice, and sometimes extra resources, but closure is occasionally the least-bad option.
To repeat: Private-school choice programs and the schools that participate in them should be regulated differently than charter schools. But differently does not mean “not at all.” Let’s embrace the potential for innovation but not be Pollyanna about the potential for waste, fraud, abuse, bad ideas, poor execution, and all the rest that comes along with human imperfection. In the meantime, let’s celebrate the very real success of the charter movement, and all of the people and institutions—authorizers included—that continue to make it possible.
