Pulling the plug on charter schools

Shifting gears from partisan politics to educational policy for a moment, the New York Times ran an item this morning on charter schools that warrants attention.

For those not familiar with the charter school phenomenon, many reform-minded educational professionals began touting a new approach to public schooling in the early 1990s. The idea would be to allow interested parties to open their own pseudo-public schools, open them up to enrollment, and get money from the state based on the number of students. These charter schools would operate independently from state educational guidelines and regulations, despite the fact that the schools’ budgets were financed by taxpayers. The idea is predicated on the notion that innovative educators could get better results free of teachers’ unions, red tape, and burdensome bureaucracy. As I said, that’s the “idea.”

The Times article highlights some of the recent failures of the charter school system in Arizona. It isn’t pretty. There are many charter schools that have hired untrained educators without college degrees, administrators who would shut down schools mid-year without explanation, and school operators who have committed fraud to bilk the state. In one charter school that was in terrible debt, school officials fired the custodian and forced each of the students to clean the facilities for an hour a day.

Naturally, despite promises that charter schools would improve students’ test scores, just the opposite has occurred. “In Arizona, which has 457 charters, one-sixth of the nation’s total, they have been labeled underperforming by the state at nearly twice the rate (36 percent) as public schools (19 percent), according to Gene V Glass, an Arizona State University professor,” the Times reported.

Carpetbagger’s own research reflects that the problem, unfortunately, goes well beyond Arizona. Several other states with similar charter school laws have faced their own series of embarrassments and fiascos.

There was a charter school in Missouri run by a company founded by Wal-Mart heir John Walton that refused to do required criminal background checks on staff. There was one near Denver that forced students to leave school and spend their days in church if found to be misbehaving. A charter school in Silicon Valley charged students’ parents up to $400 a month despite a state law that said the schools could not charge tuition. Another charter school in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., closed abruptly three years ago, leaving 200 students without a school. I’ve found problems similar to these in Illinois, Wyoming, New York, and Alaska.

One of the more shocking debacles was the GateWay Academy, a charter school in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills, which was closed in January 2002 after state investigators discovered that school administrators had ties to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations and that $1.3 million in tax dollars the school received from the state could not be accounted for.

My personal favorite is the Prepared Table Charter School in Houston, Texas, at which students were sometimes required to sit on the floor in classrooms because the school couldn’t afford desks. Prepared Table’s principal, the Rev. Harold Wilcox, meanwhile, paid himself over $250,000 annually in salary, while paying his wife over $50,000 a year to be his secretary. (Wilcox also created a three-member “Board of Trustees” for the school, consisting of his wife, his mother-in-law, and himself).

Carpetbagger understands conservatives’ love for the free market and their faith that Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” can take care of everything. I also understand the frustration many parents feel when their community’s public school isn’t performing as well as it should. But when it comes to educating children, minimal regulation — the key to the charter school system — means minimal oversight and little accountability.

This isn’t a partisan problem, charter schools have been touted by Democrats and Republicans alike, but this is a policy problem. Too many charter schools are getting millions of tax dollars despite being operated by individuals with no business management skills and no experience in educating children. Until stricter safeguards are implemented for charter schools nationwide, this problem will only get worse.