Charter schools are back in the news again, locally and nationally. The president-elect's choice to run the Education Department in Washington, D.C., has been an advocate of charter schools for years. And she is thus, according to her critics, unsafe to lead education in this country at any speed. Some of us, however, look forward to her wrangling that behemoth of an organization into something useful.
There's a good reason charter schools make the bosses in teachers' unions apoplectic: money. Charter schools aren't required to hire union workers, and those non-union workers aren't paying union dues. And since state money follows students, each child who goes to a charter school is "taking money out of" public schools. What the unions don't say, or even will admit, is that charter schools are public schools.
But charters are a bad thing overall, the aginners say. Everybody knows that. Because:
Everybody knows that charter schools take in all the affluent kids from a precinct, and leave the rest to the traditional schools.
And everybody knows that charter schools are mostly filled with white kids from the right ZIP codes, leaving the poorer, darker, and maybe even immigrant kids from the wrong side of the tracks to fend for themselves.
And everybody knows that the reason traditional school districts are shrinking is because charters are siphoning off kids all over.
And everybody knows charter schools contribute to segregation in the traditional schools and maybe everywhere else.
Everybody knows all these things. Until somebody--namely the University of Arkansas--starts studying the numbers. And education policy experts at the U of A start releasing five-part studies. Then . . . .
Somebody once said it's not what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know that just ain't so. Like much of the above.
Last week your friendly statewide newspaper published a lengthy piece on the challenges facing some school districts, especially in central Arkansas. And reporters across the way, as they do, began digging into the numbers.
Take, for example, the challenges school districts face when charter schools open nearby. Oh, the humanity!
For example, there's LISA Academy-Chenal, which is Pulaski County's newest charter school. It opened with 540 students.
About 73 are white.
The rest are mostly black, with a good representation of Hispanic and Asian kids.
And we recently met with some folks from the Little Rock Prep school who'll be going before the state to renew their charter again later this month. More than 98 percent of the kids there are minority students, the lion's share on free or reduced lunch.
(Pause.)
(Longer pause.)
Say, if the purpose of all these charter schools is to siphon off a bunch of white kids from the best neighborhoods, they're failing miserably at it. At least in Arkansas and especially in Little Rock.
Gary Ritter, founder of the U of A's office for education policy, said the university's five-part study also found that only a small fraction of all students who move out of Little Rock's traditional schools are going to charters. Many more kids who leave the district, instead of going to charters, go to other school districts (see Benton, Bryant, Sherwood, Jacksonville), or go to private schools. That is, if they don't decide on home-schooling or just up and leave the state.
Also, the study found that students aren't transferring to schools with high percentages of kids of their own race. In fact, remember the federal lawsuit challenging the opening of Pinnacle View Middle School to serve kids in western Little Rock? Supposedly the school was going to be overwhelmingly white. Turns out that ain't so, either. The school's latest numbers showed 222 students enrolled there--103 black, 91 white, the rest Asian, Hispanic or other. Imagine the embarrassment of those who just knew Pinnacle View Middle, once opened, would be lily-white. That is, if they are capable of embarrassment. In our experience, there are some making money in the courts on the Race Issue who aren't any more capable of shame than your common sofa.
The U of A's study might have surprised a few folks here and there, but it shouldn't have. No matter what the teachers' unions and other hustlers might tell you, charters are helping a great many minority kids in this state, and especially in central Arkansas. For another fine example, there's eStem in Little Rock, which picks its students by lottery and has a waiting list of thousands. And of mostly black families at that.
It's clear by now that these charter schools like eStem and LISA and others are doing exactly what they were intended to do: provide a better option to those who need it the most. Because of charter schools, fewer families are having to move out of Little Rock to find the best of public educations for their kids. And they aren't having to pay tuition for a spot in a private school, either.
Overall, charter schools are a net plus for taxpayers, families, and, yes, even the traditional schools, which are doing better every day to respond to the competition.
The numbers say so. Now if everybody would know it.
Editorial on 12/04/2016