By Charles Barone, Director of Policy
I really like and respect Nina Rees, CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and former Assistant Secretary of Education under George W. Bush. And I don’t care who knows it. But I was disappointed, to say the least, in her op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal questioning President Obama’s support for public charter schools.
Nina does a good job summarizing the growing body of research, by independent experts, that shows high-quality public charter schools out-perform their traditional public school peers, especially when it comes to educating students who are most at-risk for academic failure. More and more parents of those children are being offered an alternative to the take-it or leave-it approach to school enrollment, which has forced millions of kids to attend failing schools for generations.
Parents need more such choices. And, increased funding is critical to achieving that goal. But choosing this point in time to put the onus of increasing public charter school funding on President Obama is like saying sensible gun control legislation is dead unless Obama redoubles his support for it. Both leave out a whole lot of context.
A better way to start the piece would have been to thank Obama for all the funding he provided for public charter schools in his first term. The fact is that President Obama has done more for public charter schools than any President since Bill Clinton, who pushed for and signed the first federal charter school bill into law.
Obama increased funding for public charter schools more in his first year than George W. Bush did in his entire eight years as President. In addition, for the first time ever, Obama set aside funding – twice – to subsidize the replication and expansion of the very high-quality public charter schools, such as KIPP and Uncommon, that Rees writes about. In its first year alone, Obama’s program enabled 76,000 more students to attend 127 new and 31 expanded high-quality public charter schools in a dozen charter school networks nationwide. Some public charter networks got even more funding from Obama’s Investing in Innovation grants. Plus, Obama’s Race to the Top Initiative pushed states to lift state caps on the number of public charter schools in their states and to use charter conversion as one method for turning around chronically low-performing schools.
Rees should have thanked Obama for increasing public support for charter schools, especially with Democrats who, in most states, are the leading force blocking their expansion and preventing charters from being funded at the same level as their traditional public school peers. A 2008 survey conducted by the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University and Education Next found that linking President Obama’s support to poll questions about public charter schools increased public support for them by 11 percentage points. This powerful research showed that large chunks of the population were more willing to support reforms if they were told that President Obama supported them too.
For reasons I do not completely understand, you won’t see much of any of the above featured on NAPCS’ website or on The Wall Street Journal op-ed page – which, besides being unfair is, I think, a serious strategic mistake.