Innovation Requires Freedom: Let Charters Work
Charleston County School District has created quite the stir in the charter school sector over the last couple of days – first by suggesting amendments to a piece of legislation that reforms and strengthens how charter school authorizers function in South Carolina (amendments that would create different requirements and oversight mechanisms for local and statewide charter school authorizers), and now for their public scrutiny of the Greg Mathis Charter School.
The name of the game is control. In this case, it is who has control over locally-authorized charter schools – is it the charter schools themselves and their local governing boards of parents and community members – or should the Charleston County School District be able to require their charter schools to operate the same as any other school under their jurisdiction.
We believe it should be the former. Charter schools, which are tuition-free public schools, are granted more autonomy and freedom to innovate in exchange for heightened accountability. Curriculum, staffing and more are decisions within the local charter school’s control, not something dictated down from Charleston County’s Central Office. Charter schools receive this additional local control while still having to adhere to standards for all public schools like federal special education law and state testing requirements. These schools know their students better than Central Office and know what they need and we see parents continuing to choose public charter schools that provide a more tailored way of serving their children.
Whether a charter school is authorized by a local school district or a statewide authorizer should not matter, since the end goal is the same – improved academic outcomes. Increasing control over the locally-authorized charter schools is sure to stifle innovation. Slowly, but surely, Central Office control will make these charter schools look more and more like their traditional public counterparts and that will defeat the very reason so many parents choose to enroll their children in a public charter school.
By design, public charter schools have more accountability, not less. Each charter school is governed by an independent board of directors, who are typically parents and community members. The second level of accountability is the charter school’s authorizer, in this case, the Charleston County School District. The authorizer has the power to authorize the school’s charter, monitor performance, and close or non-renew the charter school if it has not lived up to the contractual obligations and performance standards in the charter contract.
Data speaks volumes. In fact, if we exclude the Greg Mathis Charter High School (since it is an alternative education campus specifically designed for at-risk students and for those with disabilities) from our calculations, we see that Charleston County’s average locally-authorized charter school scored 57.93 on their most recent school report card with an average Poverty Index of 61.25, while the average non-charter school scored 55.58 with a Poverty Index of 56.37. Their locally-authorized charter schools are, on average, doing better for students despite a higher student population being in poverty. The charter schools in Charleston receive a fraction of the funding that their traditional district school counterparts receive including no revenue for capital expenses like facilities or school buses. Why is Charleston County School District looking to walk back that progress and drag them down to the same level as their traditional public schools?
Charter schools are fundamentally different educational models than traditional public schools, and should be treated as such. Regulating them like traditional public schools defeats their entire purpose – to be a tuition-free alternative that is allowed to innovate and serve the needs of students who need something a little bit different from the norm.
