As President-elect Obama and the new Congress work out the details on the final amount of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, there is sure to be much lobbying from teacher unions and other school establishment groups for their share of the $70 to $100 billion likely to go towards public education. Mike, Checker, and Rick Hess have offered great insights into this "pigs at the trough" situation in their NRO piece today. Here's a plea from a piglet in Ohio:
However many billions are tossed at school construction and renovations, please make certain that charter schools get equal access to these dollars. Ohio has been in the midst of a multi-billion dollar public school construction program over the last decade, paid for largely by money from the Master Tobacco Settlement of late 1990s. Charter schools are not private or church-sponsored parochial schools. They are public schools, part of the family. Unfortunately, they are poor relations. Yet not one penny of these billions has gone to help charter schools in the Buckeye State. Charter schools here have literally had to beg, borrow, and steal to pay for facilities out of their per-pupil allotment of about $7,500. Quality charter schools serve the same needy children as district schools and as such they should get equal access to any new school facility dollars coming out of D.C.
Of course, it must be noted, there is no evidence that new school buildings have had any impact on student achievement in the Buckeye State. In fact, in Fordham's hometown of Dayton district test scores have gone down as new buildings have come up, and charters as a whole outperformed the district in 2007-2008. Regardless, if money is going to be tossed around for new facilities successful charters should get equal access to it.
