Charter schools and accountability
Published January 10, 2016
Editorial by Wilmington Star-News, January 9, 2016.
The State Board of Education is sitting on a key report on the status of charter schools in North Carolina. Lt. Gov. Dan Forrest thinks it “did not have a lot of positive things to say.”
Indeed. The report, prepared by the state Department of Public Instruction, noted that charters tend to be more segregated than traditional public schools, either almost exclusively white or almost exclusively minority. It also found that charters accept a much lower percentage of low-income and disadvantaged students than traditional schools do.
Charter schools get state money to operate, but they aren’t bound by many of the laws and regulations that conventional public schools have to abide by. They don’t have to provide buses, and they don’t have to serve free lunches to poor kids.
The theory is that, let loose from red tape, charters can experiment and try new teaching techniques, revitalizing education. Some charter schools do, in fact, live up to that lofty goal.
Like a lot of theories, however, that formula doesn’t always work in practice. In Southeastern North Carolina, for example, we’ve seen that charters run by private, for-profit companies have been remarkably secretive about how they spend taxpayer money. It’s hard to tell, but it appears that some of them have been paying headmasters and administrators bloated salaries while doling out peanuts to the front-line teachers. (Charters, by the way, don’t have to adhere to the state’s pay scale for public school teachers.)
Public school educators claim that it’s easy to rack up impressive test scores when you exclude poor and minority kids from your student body. Sadly, these youngsters often lack the background and preparation for tackling reading and math and are often behind.
For many Republicans in state government and the legislature, however, charter schools are something like an article of faith. The General Assembly has lifted the cap on new charter schools and more are on the way. (Two new ones are opening in New Hanover County later this year.)
Some Republicans, it seems, don’t want to hear anything bad about charters – or any inconvenient facts.
We are not anti-charter school. Some are excellent. We simply want thorough transparency and a complete accounting of how the schools are performing. We don’t need politicians asking us to use rose-colored glasses.
The Board of Education was supposed to vote on that report last Thursday, but the lieutenant governor convinced members to take no action. Board members are required by law to act on the report, one way or another, by Jan. 15, but Forrest told them not to worry about any old deadlines; he’d “run cover” for them.
Forrest said those nasty media people might get hold of the report and harp on one or two details to make the board look bad. But we don’t have to do that. By sticking their heads in the sand, board members are doing that just fine.
And, as usual, it’s the state’s schoolchildren who will suffer.
