Sunday, September 28, 2003

I blog to educate myself "I write books to educate myself."  This from Paul Johnson, whose recent book on art history was discussed yesterday by Tyler Cowen of the Volokh Conspiracy. Johnson's shared insight applies to those who "blog", doesn't it? 10:32:09 AM     Charter schools in Michigan In today's Detroit News, Thomas Bray writes about the "debacle" attending the effort to increase the number of charter schools operated in this state.  As a result of the decision by many teachers in Detroit to go to Lansing to agitate against the legislation, the Detroit schools were shut down for a day, and Gov. Granholm has reneged on her promise to support the legislation.   Central Michigan University, which established  57 of the 186 charter schools in operation in Michigan, operates a charter schools web site, providing information and links to other sites.  Its What is a charter school? provides a good overview of the charter school program in Michigan. Western Michigan University operates The Evaluation Project, which has done evaluations of the charter school programs in several states, including Michigan. WMU's evaluation took place in 1997-1998.  Some of the highlights from the report are: Charter schools account for about 2% of total public school enrollment in Michigan.  Although most charter schools are small, there is a decided trend toward management companies taking over the management of these schools, and that is pushing size upward.  One of the primary differences that distinguish charter schools from ordinary public schools is that a charter school is not governed by a board elected in the local community.  Its board is typically appointed by the agency which authorizes the charter.  The charter schools receive the same per-pupil funding from the state as public schools, and they also vie for private grants from various sources. The charter schools tend to demonstrate lower MEAP scores than their community counterparts, but they also take on a higher number of "at-risk" students, so that figure is skewed. Other comments from the report: "Disparities in salaries between the PSAs and host districts are extremely large. In at least two cases, the average salaries of PSA teachers are one-third the average salaries of teachers in their host district. The teachers in five PSAs had average salaries that were $30,000 or more lower than their counterparts in the host districts." "The PSAs are clearly having an impact on their local school districts. . . The presence of PSAs has put pressure on the traditional public schools to be more accountable. "Positive changes in local public schools that appear to be attributable to the presence of PSAs include the following: - the introduction of all-day kindergarten - increase in adult supervision on the playgrounds - increased emphasis on customer satisfaction - provision of more before and after school programs - more efforts to involve parents - increased efforts on the part of schools to communicate with the homes of their students - increased marketing of traditional public schools - more emphasis on foreign language - more attention to performance on the MEAP is seen by many as an improvement that is – in part – attributable to the charter schools that compete with the traditional public schools "The most immediate negative impact of the PSAs is a loss of finance for the local public school." This is the most frequently-heard lament from those who oppose charter schools: They are taking away state dollars which otherwise would go to the local public schools.  This is a misleading and deceptive argument.  For each student enrolled in the public schools, the per-student state grant is intended to give the school the resources to educate that student.  If that student is not attending the public schools, then the public schools do not have to spend money and devote resources to educating that student.  Looking at it from the other direction, if 50 students from a public school system decide to enroll in a charter school, the public schools will not be receiving over $300,000 in funds for that year, but they will also save on teachers, classrooms, books, and supplies for those students.  Every business has to adjust itself to the market.  If a man who sells fresh oranges finds that his business has dropped by 10%, he will make whatever adjustments are necessary to allow him to continue to stay open given that reduction in demand.  If the public schools are unable to adapt to a change in the market to account for a loss of 50 students, then that is a failure of management and cannot be blamed on the charter schools.  A reality is that school systems are constantly having to adapt to changes in their enrollment as population shifts.  Some schools will lose 50 students in a year, while others will gain 50.  There is no real difference between the loss of 50 students due to the opening of a competing school or due to population shifts.  In each case, the school system must make internal changes to adapt to this shift. The primary benefit of the charter schools is that they are offering parents more choices.  As the WMU report shows, the competition has increased the quality of education for those who remain in the community public schools.  The primary problem, from my perspective, is not the loss of revenue to the public schools.  It is in the pay disparity.  If charter schools are offering salaries that are 30% below the pay of public schools, then they will not be able to attract the best and the brightest.  (Note that that figure is not representative, but an extreme.)  But that is also part of the competitive mix.  If the charter schools are not able to deliver, they will lose out to their competition.  "What of the kids whose education is impaired in the meantime?", some will ask.   My response is: the public school system is pretty damned impaired right now.  10:11:40 AM

© Copyright 2003 Franco Castalone. Last update: 10/2/2003; 4:24:55 PM.