A cautionary note about charter school expansion

by David Safier

Arizona is awash in charter schools — the most per capita of any state — and there is a push to expand still further, encouraged by $14 million coming from the U.S. DOE to AZ earmarked for charters, to be followed by another $50 million a few years down the road.

Charters are a mixed bag, to put it mildly. While some are thriving and successful (BASIS comes to mind as a prime example), others are hopelessly mediocre, or worse.

Here's the big question when it comes to expansion: Is it possible to model new schools after the successful charters or expand the current ones and expect similar quality? I'm skeptical, as are others who believe in charter schools. Schools aren't McDonalds franchises you can clone and drop into a new neighborhood. They're complex organisms. Even the most successful companies overseeing a number of charters have their successes and failures, by their own admissions.

If the following quote was from an anti-charter source, you could take it with a grain of salt. But it comes from Ben Lindquist, a vice president of the Charter School Growth Fund, whose mission is to fund new, successful charters.

“There just aren’t that many charter school operators that are well-positioned to expand with quality and efficiency. The risk right now is that we will drastically over-estimate the capacity of the national charter sector to deliver new, high-quality seats for underserved families at a sustainable cost to the taxpayer."

And as for putting a big chunk of federal funding toward a quick expansion of charters:

"At this juncture, it is very important not to open the flood gates too wide [through federal funding]. If we’re not careful, we will get a large market segment that is littered with mediocrity."

Food for thought, especially for people, like me, who are hoping charter schools will succeed in offering viable, successful alternatives to district schools.