By Charles Barone, Policy Director
Earlier this week, former President Bill Clinton made waves when he criticized charter schools for “not living up to their promise.” We wholeheartedly agree. In too many states, the lax state oversight of public charter schools cited by Clinton – one of the nation’s earliest advocates for charter schools from either party and the primary force behind the 1994 enactment of the federal charter school program – has resulted in a public charter sector that performs significantly below its traditional public school counterpart.
The situation Clinton highlighted is not just bad for kids, it’s bad for the charter movement. Far too frequently, charter school advocates have resisted efforts to implement robust accountability for public charters or to improve or restructure low-performing schools. This, in turn, has provided legitimate political fodder for those who oppose charter school expansion no matter how good a job they are doing.
Clinton rightly cited New Orleans, the only district in the nation where 100% of public schools are charters, and Rhode Island, where charter students gain the equivalent of a whopping 86 days of learning per year in reading and 108 days of learning in math compared to their peers in traditional public schools, as places where charters have proved better for kids than the schools in which, without the ability to choose a high-performing charter, they would otherwise have been forced to enroll.
Clinton also could have cited more than a dozen other states where students in public charter schools are gaining two weeks or more in reading and/or math each school year compared to their peers in traditional public schools. Or applauded charter networks like Achievement First, Aspire, KIPP, Mastery, Noble, Success and Uncommon that are getting amazing results and, with the help of a charter funding stream created in 2009 by President Barack Obama, are expanding and replicating. All are meeting the high standards that Clinton rightly outlined in his speech.
Clinton made a couple remarks, though, that were at odds with the themes he sounded on charters. The first was praising New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for “his work on regulating charter schools.” In the same speech, Clinton’s admonished the crowd (and, to be clear, we think this is right on the money) that “If you’re going to get into education, I think it’s really important that you invest in what works.” Yet we have seen no evidence that de Blasio has made any differentiation between successful and unsuccessful charters in his policies. Far from it.
Second, Clinton’s comments on testing were similarly puzzling. Clinton said he’s “not opposed” to student testing, but he thinks it should be limited. “I think doing one [test] in elementary school, one in the end of middle school and one before the end of high school is quite enough if you do it right.'” Not really. The ability of states to do the type of charter oversight Clinton called for will be severely hampered if they have to wait 3-4 years to see whether individual students are making adequate progress.
The period between 3rd and 8th grades is especially critical. Missing a year or two of monitoring student progress could mean standing idly by while students attending a failing school (traditional or charter) fall increasingly, and more irretrievably, behind instead of intervening in a timely fashion to get students out of a bad school and into a good one.
We applaud President Clinton for trying to strike a balance in the charter debate by focusing everyone’s attention this week on the issue of accountability and oversight. This should be a reminder to Democrats that charter schools have strong Democratic roots and that there are positions Democrats can take on charters that lie between the poles of the unbridled support we see from some on the far right and the relentless opposition from some on the far left.
But what should be a shared goal for charters – that public investment be withdrawn when students are being ill-served and expanded when there’s an approach from which more kids should benefit – needs to be be one we share equally for all schools. To do that, states need strong accountability systems. Administering fewer tests – a laudable goal – isn’t the same as waiting years to get any information at all. If public officials are to have any credible chance of succeeding in what Clinton and we agree is one of their most important responsibilities, they – as well as parents and the general public – need to keep getting no less than annual updates on the progress of every student, in every school.
To paraphrase Clinton, for schools, charters and otherwise, who are kicking ass on the tests, we ought to be asking what they are doing right and doing a hell of a lot more of it. And because no child should have to wait to get a great education, we should be doing that as widely and frequently as possible.