Charter schools celebrate 30 years in California.
This week marks the 30th anniversary of the passage of the California Charter Schools Act, so we thought we’d take the opportunity to celebrate the success of the Golden State’s charter schools.
Charter schools have educated more than 9.4 million California students over the last three decades. Today, there are nearly 1,300 charter schools in the state. As of the 2020–21 school year, 11.5 percent of California’s public school students were enrolled in charter schools.
Unions don’t like charter schools because they thrive outside of union control, so they continue to run misinformation campaigns that cast charter schools as “corporate” or “industry” schools. The California Teachers Association's “KidsNotProfits” campaign shamelessly claims it is dedicated to exposing "the agendas of billionaires to privatize our public schools.”
But all of California’s charter schools are public schools and not-for-profit. They are funded with taxpayer dollars, tuition-free and open to all students. Charter schools do not have eligibility or entrance requirements — students are admitted regardless of income or academic achievement. Charter schools report to their own board of directors, not the teachers' unions, so charters have more flexibility with teaching methods and curriculum, and can be more innovative than union-run schools.
That independence often translates into better performing schools. In U.S. News and World Report’s 2019 rankings, four of the top ten California high schools were charter schools.
What really triggers the teachers’ unions is that California’s charter schools are diverse — more than half of the state's charter school students are Latino; 57 percent of charter students are low-income. And, student performance data shows charter schools have been especially successful for Latino, Black and low-income students as well as English Language Learners.
A report from Innovate Public Schools in partnership with the University of Southern California found that in Los Angeles County, 45% of top public middle schools for low-income Latino students in math are charters, and 52% of top public high schools for low-income Latino students are charters.
The results in the Bay Area are more staggering: 62 percent of top public middle schools for low-income Latino students in math are charters, and 87 percent of top public high schools for low-income Latino students in math and English are charters.
A study based on student performance at charter and district schools on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests found that Black students at charter schools "made greater gains on reading and math tests than their peers at district schools" to the tune of nearly an additional half-year’s worth of learning.
Of course, being free from union control allowed charter schools to pivot much more quickly during the pandemic to meet student needs. That fact wasn’t lost on parents. A recent survey found that over a quarter of California parents moved their children to a new school during the pandemic, and most of those families switched from traditional public schools to public charter schools.
All of that doesn’t sit well with California's teachers’ unions. They continue to use their mega-millions to try to undermine charter schools because they don’t actually care about students or families. They only care about union power and control.
To learn more about California’s charter schools, be sure to check out the recording of this week’s Charter School Forum hosted by the Orange County Board of Education, “Strengthening California’s Charter Schools at a Local and State Level."
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