Good charter schools, bad charter schools

by David Safier

The good news: good charter schools can be very good. For certain parts of the student population, they can be better than public schools.

The bad news: bad charter schools can be just awful. They're run either by incompetents or profiteers — sometimes by incompetent profiteers — and the students are the victims.

A review of a recent study of New York charter schools points this out. The study maintains that students at New York charters perform significantly better on standardized tests than equivalent students in district schools. Some of the methodology is being questioned — the study hasn't been peer reviewed yet — but here is something which struck me as being very telling, and which I'm sure will stand up.

. . . 14 percent of students in the study attended charter schools that had an overall negative effect on math performance, compared with students who [applied to get into the charter but] did not win the lottery.

Assuming the finding is true, a number of NY charter schools should be closed, using the same standards the study used to applaud overall charter performance. Or they never should have been allowed to set up shop in the first place.

. . . as Joe Nathan, a founder of the [charter school] movement, says, “Some terrific charters are doing great things for kids, but charlatans have entered the field and have ripped off kids and taxpayers.” He says charter school organizations must develop better ways of screening out crooks and incompetents before they get to start schools.

According to a Stanford study, Arizona is among the states where charter school students perform less well than the equivalent district school students. This study too is subject to question, as are all ed studies. But imagine what the charter scores would be like if the bad charters were eliminated.

It's far easier to eliminate a poor charter than a poor district school, since the students from the closed charter flow back into district schools. It's not so easy if a district school closes. We need more oversight, both in authorizing of charters and weeding out the bad ones once they start, something sorely lacking in our charter school system.