I once heard an interesting parable at the beginning of an economics course. It went something like this: a physicist, a chemist, and an economist are stranded on a remote island with an unopened can of food that might help them survive until being rescued. The physicist devises a plan to use the force of gravity to smash the can open, while the chemist proposes heating the can before attempting to open it. The economist merely says, “Well, assume we have a can opener.”
Economists study the allocation of resources using — as the story underscores — models and assumptions of how things work in a perfect world. However, crafting law and public policy requires that we also contend with the vagaries and pesky imperfections of the real world. Since the charter school movement was predicated on the application of free-market principles to our system of public education, it is with this caveat in mind that Massachusetts voters should consider the ballot initiative on charter schools in November.
There are many reasons not to lift the current cap on charter schools. They have a devastating financial impact on traditional public schools, an unproven record of success, and are not accountable to local communities. Furthermore the argument for their expansion is based on misleading claims of massive waitlists (see the state auditor’s report on this), and it is arguably reckless to hold a public referendum on such a complex topic in the first place (remember Brexit?).
Yet I believe the most important reason to vote “No” on Question 2 is a more fundamental, troubling and largely unacknowledged issue: as they currently operate, charter schools do not serve their intended purpose and cannot reasonably claim to be public entities.
As originally conceived in the early 1990s, charter schools were to be granted more autonomy in curriculum, administration, and hiring practices in return for a different sort of accountability (five-year reviews from the state). The idea was for charter schools to serve as laboratories in which unique approaches could be tested, and promising results then shared with and replicated by traditional public schools. At the same time, market pressure in the form of local enrollment decisions would provide the needed incentive for traditional schools to improve in order to retain students.
In these ways — testing out new approaches and creating an incentive for reform — charter schools would be serving the broader public and could arguably be considered public entities. Unfortunately this model assumes the proverbial can opener; in applying free-market principles to schools, it assumes a perfect flow of information and perfect freedom of choice that simply do not reflect reality. The first problem is that market signals and information are not freely available, since best practices from successful charters are not being shared or replicated in any way.
Don’t just take my word for it. In December of 2014 the Office of the State Auditor released an official report on the state’s oversight of charter schools. It explains how charter schools are required to document their innovative programs and best practices while the onus is on DESE to disseminate this information and provide “technical assistance” in replicating successes.
Unfortunately, “DESE has not adequately documented that it has facilitated these practices, nor has it taken action to broadly disseminate charter school innovative best practice information itself since 2009.”
The system is not working, and as a result, “charter schools may not be fulfilling their statutory purpose of stimulating the development of innovative public education programs and providing models for replication in other public schools.”
It is not enough that a well-intentioned principal here or there has reached out to their counterparts to try to share ideas; until there is a well-designed and consistently applied mechanism to ensure that charters are actually serving as “laboratories of innovation” for the state, they cannot claim to serve the public good. Instead, they operate as a separate system that benefits a very small number of Massachusetts families.
The second flawed assumption has to do with the application process. Within the region that a charter school serves, any child may enter a lottery to be admitted. In that way, charters are considered open to the public and are thus public entities. The problem is that the act of applying in the first place acts as a barrier and creates a self-selective process whereby families with the awareness, stability, know-how, and general means of applying are those who ultimately attend. For any number of reasons — transience, homelessness, language barriers, economic hardship, to name just a few — some families are unaware of the opportunity or less able to apply.
As a result, in Greenfield we have a charter school (a good one, by all accounts) that serves zero students who are English Language Learners, and only 25 percent who are classified as “Economically Disadvantaged” as compared to nearly 46 percent in the Greenfield Public Schools. The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported on a similar finding in August: “Northampton Study: Charter School families well-to-do, highly educated.” Whatever the theory, in practice charter school demographics are not representative of local populations. The assumption that all families are perfectly free to choose by entering a lottery, which underpins this system’s claim to serve the public, is bogus.
There are some excellent charter schools that do wonderful things for some kids, and they could be a useful tool in a multifaceted approach to public school reform. Unfortunately the charter school movement as a whole rests on faulty assumptions, and until these issues are studied and addressed to ensure that charter schools truly serve the broad public interest it would be foolish to increase their number by the dozens. So in November, remember that Question 2 is NOT a referendum on your local charter school, or even on the relative merits of charter schools generally. The question is whether we should vastly expand an entire system that has never functioned as intended.
Martin teaches history at Greenfield High School.