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When
will conventional public schools be as accountable as charter schools?
By:
Brian Carpenter
Spending on public education consumes the largest piece of Kentucky’s budget
pie. Yet there is little accountability for how the schools that receive that
money are performing.
But such accountability – without which Kentucky’s education system will not
significantly improve – will never happen without more choices for parents.
According to the Heritage Foundation, Kentucky is one of only 10 states that do
not offer the option of charter schools, which are public schools that have a
high degree of independence from existing rules and regulations.
But critics of charter schools point to the closing of a few charter schools
around the nation as evidence of the failure of such alternatives. Actually,
it’s just the opposite.
Envision a local public school that misappropriates federal grant monies, posts
abysmal student test scores and carries an operating deficit in its budget.
After eight years of such poor performance, the state finally shuts it down. A
bad school goes out of business.
No such thing you say? Think again.
On June 30, the Walter French Academy in Lansing, Mich. became the 15th charter
school in Michigan since 1994 to be closed by its authorizer – and rightly so.
In a May 27 letter to the academy’s board president from the school’s
authorizer, the Charter Schools Office of Central Michigan University, the
academy was informed that its contract – the legal charter to operate – would
not be renewed.
Justification for CMU’s decision was ample: “deficit operating fund balances for
six consecutive years … [standing at] $605,086” at the close of the 2003 fiscal
year; “meetings [which] appear to have violated the Open Meetings Act”; and “a
poorly implemented educational program.”
In addition to “these actions [which] demonstrate a consistent pattern of the
Academy Board’s lack of governance and leadership … “ was a finding by the
Michigan Department of Education in February 2004 that the school spent
“4,135,443 in federal monies on building repairs that were not part of the
proposal that secured the grant.
Amidst these and a plethora of other problems the CMU Charter School Office did
what should be done with a chronically failing school by cutting off the flow of
taxpayer dollars.
While Jim Goenner, executive director of CMU’s Charter Schools Office, says the
decision to close the academy is “heartbreaking,” he also regards the decree as
“a victory for the charter school movement because it fulfills the promise” of
rewarding schools that perform well while sanctioning – or even closing – those
that do poorly.
Many of Michigan’s traditional public schools produce equally dismal
performances as the Walter French Academy, yet the threat of closure appears to
be nowhere imminent.
For example, the Detroit Public School system is legendary for its inability to
account for taxpayers’ money. Despite well above-average operating expenditures
which, according to Standard & Poor’s School Evaluation Services, are $9,532 per
student, the district had a dreadful 30 percent passing rate on the 2002
Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) and a 69 percent graduation rate.
Unions and their political allies often resist even the modest reforms fostered
by Kenneth Burnley, the school system’s CEO. Burnley himself is the target of
the ceaseless, aggravating efforts of school choice critics obsessed with
thwarting further change.
Whenever the possibility of competition arises, teacher unions and their
political allies can usually be counted on to oppose it at every turn. For
example, a $200 million offer from a private philanthropist to open 15 charter
high schools in Detroit recently was nixed at the expense of the many inner city
parents and students who thirst for such options.
Raise the specter of charter school options and the usual suspects doggedly show
up to block the schoolhouse door. With their own selfish interests a priority,
they make irresponsible claims, including charges that “charter schools aren’t
accountable.”
Yet parents are not forced to send their children to a charter school. And as
the closing of Walter French Academy illustrates, a bad charter school does not
have an entitlement for eternity.
Should public schools that spend a fortune but fail to teach be allowed to
remain open while extracting more and more tax dollars year after year? It seems
to depend on which public schools are in question.
For Walter French Academy and other charter school closures which preceded it,
the answer is no. Yet for failing – but conventional – public schools, the
answer is yes.
The question citizens should be contemplating is: When will conventional public
schools ever be as accountable as charter schools?
Brian L. Carpenter is director of leadership development at the Mackinac
Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., and an adjunct scholar for the
Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions.
The first version of this publication appeared as a Mackinac Center Viewpoint of
the same title on August 16, 2004.
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