Charter Schools Rising

Big front-page WaPo story today about charter schools in the District of Columbia--which enrolled about 25 percent of the District's public school students in 2005-06 and will likely increase their share with the opening of 6 new schools this fall. For the most part, this was a pretty good article about the growth of charter schools in the past decade (D.C.'s charter movement turns 10 this year) and the impacts, positive, negative and minimal on DCPS.

I was a bit annoyed, though, by the amount of traction the Post gave Save our Schools, a DC-area anti-charter group. The article presented three of SOS's major arguments: First, that charter schools are hurting public schools by taking away funds; second, that charters are resegregating DC schools; and finally, as SOS leader Gina Arlotto so eloquently expressed it in the Post, "the charters stink, too."

Let's look at these arguments one by one. D.C.'s per-pupil weighted funding formula means that, yes, when a child switches from a DCPS school to a charter, the funding follows. But, DCPS also no longer has to bear the costs of educating that child. Certainly from the perspective of an invididual school, which may lose only a few students and has fixed costs, this is cold comfort. But it's important not to forget that spending on DCPS has also increased substantially since the charter law was passed, meaning that most DCPS schools are getting more per pupil now even though they serve fewer pupils. Not to mention analysis showing that, SOS rhetoric about pro-charter favoritism aside, charters actually receive less public funds per pupil than DCPS. (For various reasons, it may not seem like that at the individual school level within DCPS, but that's a DCPS system problem, not a charter school problem).

Then there's the resegregation issue. I find the claim inherently bizarre, since it would be pretty darn hard for DCPS to get more segregated than it already is. The real criticism isn't that charter schools are resegregating DCPS so much as that a few charter schools are attracting some white students. Both charter critics and the Post article ignored the vast majority of DC charters that serve a higher percentage of minority kids than the District at large to focus on two--Two Rivers and Capital City--that, at least in part because of where they are located, serve a much higher percentage of white students than the District's schools overall. But it's not like either of these schools is a lily-white enclave: Two Rivers, on Capitol Hill, is more than half black and 7 percent Hispanic, and Capital City, which is located in Columbia Heights, is about one-third each white, black, and Hispanic. And given that DCPS's nearly 85 percent African American enrollment and housing patterns mean most black kids in DCPS will be attending nearly all-black schools, attracting more white kids into the system seems like a way to reduce segregation for at least some DCPS students, not increase it.

Not to mention that for a lot of more affluent families choosing charter schools, the alternative wouldn't be to attend a DCPS school, unless they're among the fortunate few that can get into highly-regarded programs like the Capitol Hill Cluster School (where, by the way, Arlotto and other SOS activists send their kids--they wouldn't send them to a run of the mill D.C. school either, for all they want to deny parents who can't afford to live in their school boundaries better options) or the schools west of Rock Creek Park--instead it's sending their kids to an expensive private school or moving to Virginia or Maryland.

It's worth noting a major point the Post's analysis of declining DCPS enrollments overlooked: DCPS enrollment was falling long before charters came on the scene, and when you combine charter and DCPS enrollment, the decline in D.C.'s public school enrollment has actually slowed since charters came on the scene, suggesting that charters are helping D.C. keep more of the young families it needs to grow and thrive. This is why, as long as there's no definitive evidence that charters are discriminating in admissions or counseling out some kids, I don't have a problem with charter schools seeking to attract middle-class families of any race back into the city's public schools. Building more of the kind of public schools those families want to send their kids to also expands opportunities for less advantaged kids in D.C., and keeping those families in the District is important for long-term economic development, civic life, and stability. And, I have to admit, I have a bit of a personal interest here: I love this city, I love living here, and, if I'm ever so fortunate as to have children of my own, I'd really like to be able to send them to a public school in D.C.--and NOT one that's west of Rock Creek Park.

The strongest criticism folks can level against charter schools in D.C. right now is on quality--like DCPS the District's charter schools, on average, are performing far less well than they need to be. But the most recent data shows that charters are outperforming DCPS across the board; the District's authorizers are making progress closing down the lowest-performing schools, which should also improve quality; and some of D.C.'s charter schools are very good schools. But it's still not good enough, and everyone involved in the District's charter school community needs to keep working to improve quality and performance, because our kids and our city depend on it.