Charter Schools: Alabama’s Latest Education Experiment
Governor Bentley lamented a month ago that, “Our education system in this state sucks.”. This statement was unconstructive, demeaning, and an uncouth criticism of the hardworking people of Alabama who dedicate their lives to the education of our students. The only redemption after that statement would lie in what Governor Bentley intends to do about the issues our education system face.
A large reform set to hit Alabama’s education system in recent years began back in March, when a bill allowing for charter programs in the state was signed into law. Charter schools have been widely embraced by most states for the past two to three decades. Charter schools are publicly funded, but privately owned and operated schools that can be run by virtually anyone who applies and meets the standards of the Alabama Public Charter School Commission Board. The intent behind charters is to allow for innovative teaching methods that bypass the over regulated traditional public school bureaucracy. Charter schools are supposed to be held accountable by market principles and small regulations from the state. If the school is failing then either parents would remove their students from that school to seek a better option or the authorizers would dissolve the school. Charter schools through the principle of competition would force other schools to work harder in order to attract students who are now given their choice of schooling options.
Yet, despite the large amounts of growth and enthusiasm charter schools have received, the results are mixed at best. The nonpartisan Spencer Foundation found, “There is very little evidence that charter and traditional public schools differ meaningfully in their average impact on students’ standardized test performance.” In fact, there is some reason to suggest that many charter programs perform lower than traditional public schools. In studying over 2000 charter schools in fifteen states, researchers at Stanford University found that more then 80 percent of charter schools performed the same or worse than the local public schools. That is not to say there are no successful charter programs, but most of the data points to the fact they are not improving our education issues across the country.
One of the biggest threats of charter schools is the siphoning of public funding from our traditional, public schools. For every student that leaves a public school to move to a charter, their public funding goes with them. Yet, if students leave charter schools in the middle of the year to return to a public school, their funding stays with the charter program. Charter programs are also able to receive large private donations. KIPP schools for instance, one of the nation’s more successful ventures for charter programs, received an average of $5,700 per student in 2008 according to the Washington Post. The financial corruption of charter programs also present serious issues in the way of public funds. The Center for Popular Democracy found in looking at merely 15 of the 42 states with charter programs, that the amount taxpayer money that was lost, misused, or wasted by charters totaled over $200 million dollars. These tax dollars cannot be wasted given that Alabama is already below the national average for spending per student.
The decision to move towards charter schools is a large gamble. Improving schools is not a simple task. The Kansas court put it best in chastising legislators relying on unproven reforms as “experimenting with our children (who) have no recourse from a failure of the experiment.” There can be no room for gambling when it comes to providing a quality education to the children of Alabama. Access to a quality education is an avenue out of poverty and poor circumstance. We must look at concrete results to form policy affecting our schools. The concept that introducing charter programs is somehow a fix to Alabama’s education issues is misguided at best and negligent at worst. Charter schools allow for politicians and policy makers to push off the responsibility of helping students onto private organizations. The real policies that better education can be seen in small class sizes, pre-K programs, extra resources for disadvantaged and challenged students, less standardized testing, and properly funded and trained teachers. These reforms are complex to implement and can be expensive. However, that does not remove the moral imperative our state has for providing an education that serves as a backbone for a prosperous life. Before insulting our public educators, Governor Bentley needs to be sure he is making the proper decisions to ensure the educational outcomes our state deserves.
