WHEN THE MASSACHUSETTS Board of Elementary and Secondary Education recently approved two new charter schools and the expansion of five others, it wasn’t acting on the basis of any ideological predisposition. Instead, it was responding to results.
Charter public schools in Massachusetts are delivering tremendous benefits to students, especially students from minority and low-income families. The widely respected Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University has found that Boston’s charter schools are some of the best in nation, far outpacing the city’s traditional public schools in academic quality. Brooke Charter Schools, a group of three Boston schools granted permission to expand and add a high school last week, consistently delivers strong results for students, leading the board’s chairman, Paul Sagan, to call Brooke “a rock star.”
The success of Massachusetts’ charter public schools isn’t an accident. It’s the result of good policy and strong practices among charter school authorizers and charter school leaders. Both of these factors have been recognized recently by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
A new report from the National Alliance, The Health of the Charter Public School Movement, highlights the excellent practices and outcomes of the charter public school movement in Massachusetts, ranking the state near the top of 18 states analyzed.
Of particular note, Massachusetts’ charter public schools serve a significantly higher percentage of racial and ethnic minority students as compared with traditional public schools. Fifty-six percent of charter school students are black or Hispanic versus 25 percent of students in traditional public schools. Charter schools also serve a higher percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch (an indicator of family income). A key factor is that 53 percent of the state’s charter public schools are located in non-suburban areas; for traditional public schools the figure is 38 percent. Charter school leaders are identifying places with the most urgent needs, and going there to address them.
Students who attend charter public schools in Massachusetts receive an outstanding education. According to a national research study conducted by CREDO, the average charter public school student in Massachusetts gained 36 more days of learning in reading and 65 more days in math compared with peers in district-run schools.
Befitting a state as innovative as Massachusetts, 44 percent of the state’s charter public schools have an innovative special focus, including STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education, Montessori instruction, and foreign language immersion.
Unfortunately, while Massachusetts has a solid charter school law, featuring strong accountability and autonomy for charter schools, certain policy limitations are preventing the state’s charter schools from growing to serve more students. Namely, funding for charter school students is less than what’s spent on district-school students and Massachusetts artificially caps the number of charter schools in the state. Just 4 percent of public school students statewide attend a charter public school and Boston (17 percent) is the only community in the state with more than 10 percent of students enrolled in charter schools.
Given that more than 25,000 names are on wait lists to attend charter public schools, there is plenty of demand to expand these options. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has listened to parents and responded to their desire to have more access to better schools for their children. Yet the artificial caps on charter school growth mean the state board can only do so much. Gov. Charlie Baker and legislative allies are right to try to lift those caps, recognizing that it makes little sense to limit opportunities for students to attend great schools.
Massachusetts has long been recognized as having outstanding public schools that prepare students to outpace their peers in the United States and compete with the best students in the world. Charter public schools are enhancing the state’s educational reputation even further, and ensuring that students from minority and low-income families get every bit as strong an education as their more affluent peers. By lifting the caps on charter public school growth, Massachusetts leaders can make a high-quality education accessible to even more students.
Todd Ziebarth is the senior vice president for state advocacy and support at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. He is the author of the report issued by the alliance last week.
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Here’s the rest of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ story:
“we work to: Fuel the growth of…charter schools by advocating for increased public funding…Shape federal and state policy to create the climate in which…charter schools can grow; and Improve the overall health and perception of the (charter school) movement in order to increase our influence with policymakers.”
What’s the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ game plan? The group developed a model charter school law with 20 “essential components.” Here are a few of those components: 1) No caps on the growth of charter schools 2) Allow a variety of charter schools including virtual 3) Allow multiple authorizers 4) Adequate authorizer funding including provisions for guaranteed funding from authorizer fees 5) Fiscally and legally autonomous schools having most powers granted to other traditional public school district boards 6) Automatic exemptions from many state laws 7) Extra-curricular and interscholastic activities access at traditional public schools for a fee for students at charters that do not provide extra-curricular and interscholastic activities. 8) Equitable operational funding and equal access to all state and federal funding flowing to the school in the “same amount as district schools” 9) Equitable access to capital funding and facilities including multiple provisions such as: a per-pupil facility allowance (equal to statewide average per-pupil capital costs); facility grant and revolving loan programs; a charter school bonding authority (or access to all relevant state tax-exempt bonding authorities available to all other public schools); the right of first refusal to purchase or lease at or below fair market value a closed or unused public school facility or property 10) Access to employee retirement systems, with the option to participate in a similar manner to all other public schools.
So the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools developed a model law and each year ranks states “based on how well their laws align to this model.” While The Health of the Charter Public School Movement is described in this OpEd piece as “highlights the excellent practices and outcomes of the charter public school movement in Massachusetts, ranking the state near the top of 18 states analyzed” the report actually ranks states against its model law.
Here’s an excerpt from the charter school model law: “A public charter school may give enrollment preference to children of a public charter school’s founders, governing board members, and full-time employees, so long as they constitute no more than 10% of the school’s total student population.”
Here’s another excerpt from the charter school model law: “Except as provided in this Act, a public charter school shall not be subject to the state’s education statutes or any state or local rule, regulation, policy, or procedure relating to non-charter public schools within an applicable local school district regardless of whether such rule, regulation, policy, or procedure is established by the local school board, the state board of education, or the state department of education.”