On the Negative Impact of Charter Schools
Plus, TN ed reform groups collude to siphon funds from local school districts
Educator and blogger Peter Greene offers an analysis of a recent policy memo outlining the impact of charter schools on education policy. The bottom line: It’s not good. Charters are expensive, unaccountable, and don’t help boost student achievement.
Here’s more from Green’s most recent piece in Forbes.
First, charters lead to significant operating inefficiencies:
This is not rocket science; trying to run multiple school systems with the money originally set aside to run one is bound to be inefficient. And because modern charter policy is based on the premise that all of these systems must compete, attempts to create “compacts” that help charters cooperate with each other and with public systems to share resources and reduce waste and duplication are rare, and rarely successful.
But if they are expensive, that might be ok IF the schools showed positive results.
Turns out, they don’t:
Ladd points out that the charter record on raising those test scores is mixed at best, with many charter schools doing no better or even worse than public schools.
Greene also notes that when it comes to transparency and accountability, charters earn a failing grade:
Modern charter schools are businesses, and act as such. The information they provide parents may be more about marketing than providing full disclosure. Inevitably, every dollar they spend on the students is a dollar they don’t get to bank. And because they are granted autonomy, including the freedom to experiment, it is hard to know, in the absence of meaningful oversight, whether or not they are accomplishing the mission of public education.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, education reform groups SCORE (State Collaborative on Reforming Education) and the Tennessee Charter School Center have hired an education finance consulting firm in order to direct state and local dollars under the state’s new funding formula (TISA) to charter operators.
Here’s more on that effort:
Nashville education blogger and new Tennessee Star reporter TC Weber reports that Bill Frist’s education reform organization – SCORE – has hired a national education funding consultant to help charter schools extract public funding for their private operations.
Afton Partners, a national organization specializing in school funding and education policy, has announced via social media a new partnership with the Tennessee State Collaborative for Reforming Education (SCORE) and The Tennessee Charter School Center (TCSC). The stated purpose of the budding collaboration is to help Tennessee’s charter school leaders better understand the operational and financial implications of Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) – the state’s new funding formula for public schools.
The bottom line: The consultant is being paid to help charter operators get the most money from TISA – meaning a greater negative impact to local school system budgets.