[The program gives millions to schools that disrupt rather than
improve a system of public education that needs to serve all students.
] [[link removed]]

WHERE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S CHARTER SCHOOL PROGRAM WENT WRONG  
[[link removed]]


 

Jeff Bryant
May 3, 2021
Our Schools [[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ The program gives millions to schools that disrupt rather than
improve a system of public education that needs to serve all students.
_

,

 

From the outset, charter schools were somewhat of a blind man’s
elephant—people saw in them whatever they wanted—but two competing
theories that helped propel the charter movement were that the schools
would serve as laboratories for experimenting with new education
approaches that could be shared with public school districts, or that
charters were created to disrupt the public school system by giving
parents an alternative to district-run schools.

When the federal government got involved in creating new charter
schools, beginning formally in 1994, it leaned into the former of
those theories rather than the latter. The bill that led to the
forming of the Charter School Program (CSP) under the Department of
Education described charters as “a mechanism for testing a variety
of educational approaches,” and to this day, part of the mission of
the CSP, as defined by the education department’s Office of
Innovation and Improvement that oversees it, is to “increase public
understanding of what charter schools can contribute to American
education.”

Since its inception, the CSP has given out more than $4.1 billion to
create and expand charter schools, according to a December 2019 report
by the Network for Public Education (NPE).

Yet somewhere along the way, the CSP forgot its duty to create and
oversee a charter sector that benefited the public system and instead
has chosen to reward schools that give narrow slices of children and
families a publicly funded alternative to their local schools. NPE has
called on members of Congress to “defund” the CSP, saying it’s
“a program that has lost its mission.”

Indeed, the CSP seems generally to have abandoned its original
commitment to a cooperative model of charter schools and has instead
tended to award charters that disrupt school districts by creating
competitive schools that serve only the interests of specific
populations of students rather than developing innovations that all
students could benefit from.

GRANTS AWARD DISCRIMINATION

In compiling a March 2019 NPE report that I coauthored with NPE
executive director Carol Burris, we found numerous examples of CSP
grants that were awarded to schools that tailored their policies and
programs to attract specific populations of students and discourage
others.

In one example we found, an Idaho charter school that received a
five-year $1,250,000 grant in 2018 to expand its enrollment emphasized
a military theme in its recruitment, enforced a strict dress code, and
emphasized “patriotism” in its curriculum. Therefore, it was
unsurprising that the school enrolled a student population that had a
disproportionately lower percent of English language learners and a
higher percent of white students compared to schools in the
surrounding community.

Another CSP grantee received $1,115,137 in 2018 for expanding its
“diverse” student body even though the school had achieved that
“diversity” by enrolling 100 percent of the small number of white
students in the community and the population of Black students who
were least apt to be from households with incomes low enough to
qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

In another alarming case, a recipient of multiple federal grants
totaling about $7 million between 2006 and 2015, the Great Hearts
chain of schools, was cited four times in a 2017 report from the ACLU
of Arizona for operating schools that practiced “illegal or
exclusionary” policies and practices—including turning away
transgender and special needs students and enrolling students who were
disproportionally white and wealthy, compared to the communities where
the schools were located.

AN EGREGIOUS EXAMPLE OF EXCLUSION

The most egregious example we found was the multiple grants awarded to
charters operated by BASIS Educational Group. From 2006 to 2014, the
CSP awarded grants of $5,605,000 to several charter schools operated
by the education management company, with most of the funding
($4,140,000) passed through a grant to the state of Arizona.

Our report pointed to an analysis of the student demographics of BASIS
schools in Arizona that Burris had published in the Washington Post in
2017, which found those schools’ enrollment demographics comprised a
racial makeup that was dissimilar to the rest of the state.

Specifically, Burris found that although the student population of
Arizona public schools was 5 percent Black and 45 percent Latinx,
students in BASIS schools were only 3 percent Black and 10 percent
Latinx. BASIS overwhelmingly enrolled students who were Asian, 32
percent, and white, 51 percent, compared to Arizona public schools,
where Asian students comprised only 3 percent of students, and white
students were 39 percent of school enrollments.

Burris observed a number of tactics BASIS charter schools employed to
skew their student enrollment to students who are more
socioeconomically advantaged, including limiting its schools’
enrollment of students with learning disabilities and students
struggling with the English language; eschewing the federal
government’s free or reduced-price lunch program that low-income
families rely on to feed their children during the day; and opting not
to provide free bus transportation to its schools.

When I looked for a source to update Burris’ findings, I consulted
Kevin Welner, the director of the National Education Policy Center at
the University of Colorado Boulder, whose book on charter schools
issues is due out in the fall.

“In BASIS Arizona, only 1 percent of all students are English
language learners,” he said, “and only 1 percent are eligible to
receive free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL). This is in a state with 52
percent FRPL students in public schools. We see similar
under-enrollment of students with special needs. In BASIS Arizona,
only 3 percent of students have [a disability requiring special
needs], compared to 13 percent in the state’s public schools.
Similarly, in 2018, we found that less than 2 percent of BASIS
students in Texas received any type of special education services.”

WHERE CSP WENT WRONG

But to be clear, schools like those operated by BASIS, and the other
charter grantees exposed in our report, were never created to serve
all students. They were created to be a specific type of school to
serve a specific type of student.

So, if the purpose of the federal government’s CSP is to “increase
public understanding of what charter schools can contribute to
American education,” then what we’ve learned is that these
schools, at least how they are currently conceived and replicated, are
adding to divisions and inequities in the public system rather than
lifting up the common good.

No one argues that schools should not serve the interests of a
specific racial student population or the needs of students who have
high ability levels. But to make those aims the sole rationale for
funding a vast charter entity that competes with local schools, at the
expense of other types of students in the community, is antithetical
to the whole concept of a public education system. Yet that is what
the CSP has been funding. And unless the political will becomes
evident, it has no reason to stop doing so.

==

This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing
fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications
consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the
Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for
progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and
reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he
speaks frequently at national events about public education policy.
Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]