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The opinion piece “Charter schools not performing as planned in Pennsylvania; should we scrap them?” by Joseph Rogan of Misericordia University, which appeared online March 28, sets a new standard for using selective and misleading information to reach an unwarranted conclusion.
Let me address a few of the most blatant transgressions in fact and logic.
Charter schools are “privately operated.” False: By law, every charter school in the state must be a nonprofit organization, managed by a nonprofit board and overseen by either a school district or the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Charter schools are “free from most of the rules and regulations that control traditional public schools.” False: Charter schools must comply with the same academic and financial standards as traditional schools, and they have additional compliance requirements to their authorizer that traditional schools do not have.
“Public schools accept all students, while many charters do not.” False: As a public school, charters must enroll every student who applies, subject only to there being enough available spots to accommodate all of the applicants.
“Pennsylvania charter schools received $350 million for special education students, but spent only $156 million.” Misleading: As with district schools, charters receive regular education money for every student and additional money to address the needs of each special education student. The $350 million includes $177 million for regular education and $173 million for special education. The accurate comparison would be between the $173 million received and the $156 million spent. Moreover, the $156 million includes only one element of special education charter expenses and ignores others.
“Our state’s (traditional school) students fare far better than charter students in both reading and math …” Misleading: This is true if you compare charter scores with the statewide average, which includes every affluent school in the state. But it is not true if you look at average comparisons with the traditional schools from which the charters draw their students.
This better performance for charters is true not only on the School Performance Profile scores, but also in the 2015 CREDO study, which shows that urban charter schools, including those in Philadelphia, significantly outperform the traditional schools in both reading and math. (See http://urbancharters.stanford.edu.) The study also shows that the gap between traditional students and charter students increases the longer the student is in the charter school.
Parents choose to leave traditional public schools for a reason. The irony is that districts could close every charter school in the state by doing only two things – ask the parents why they felt it necessary to leave, and change to address their concerns.
Until that happens, professor Rogan might not need charter schools, but the 128,000 children in those schools, and tens of thousands on waiting lists to get in, do.