Reconfirmed: Charters a mixed bag (The good ones aren’t cheap!)

by David Safier

A lengthy article in the Sunday NY Times confirmed what should be a truism by now: the best charter schools are terrific, and the worst are lousy. Taken together, comparisons of charter and traditional schools result in a wash.

What's less well known is, many of the most successful charter schools are heavily subsidized by private foundations.

Nonprofit networks of charter operators with top-flight schools — outfits like Uncommon, KIPP and Aspire Public Schools — have created only about 350 in the past decade, and required $500 million in philanthropic support, according to Thomas Toch, author of a study last year on many of the groups underwritten by the New Schools Venture Fund. He questioned whether successful charters could be “scaled up” without sacrificing quality and without heavy subsidies from private donors.

The schools in the quoted passage, I should add, are ones that have been most successful with the hardest-to-reach students. Quality education for our lowest performing students isn't cheap.

What's also less well known is, some traditional public schools have made amazing strides with the same types of children — P.S. 172 in Brooklyn, for instance:

Perfection may seem a quixotic goal in New York City, where children enter school from every imaginable background and ability level. But on the tests, P.S. 172, also called the Beacon School of Excellence, is coming close — even though 80 percent of its students are poor enough to qualify for free lunch, nearly a quarter receive special education services, and many among its predominately Hispanic population do not speak English at home.

In 2009, the 580-student primary school, tucked between fast-food restaurants and gas stations in a semi-industrial strip of Fourth Avenue, topped the city with its fourth-grade math scores, with all students passing, all but one with a mark of “advanced,” or Level 4. In English, all but one of 75 fourth graders passed, earning a Level 3 or 4, placing it among the city’s top dozen schools.

Traditional or charter, the formula for these high performing schools made up of students who are usually low performing seems to be a combination of very high expectations, a highly structured environment, tutoring and other forms of Tender Loving Care for students who are falling behind, and an overwhelmingly positive atmosphere. Extra bucks certainly help as well.

(We can get into discussions about whether these schools teach too much to the test, but if you look beyond test scores at the number of students who graduate and go to college, the success rate of these schools can't be denied.)

Can the successes be duplicated on a mass scale in a traditional or charter school environment? That's the biggest question. So far, we don't have anything approaching an answer.