Bridge over troubled waters

Making peace with charter schools

Lucerne Valley school board member Tom Courtney is something of a rarity: Instead of dreading the arrival of a new charter school in his district, he is actually looking forward to the August launch of Lucerne Valley Career Academy “with high hopes and big dreams.”

Courtney understands that many of his colleagues have had bad experiences with charters. In fact, his district had to cope with the closure of a local campus of the ill-fated California Charter Academy, the state’s most spectacular and costly charter failure.

Nonetheless, he’s wildly optimistic about the opportunities his district can offer students by chartering its own vocational high school in partnership with Victor Valley Community College. Courtney, a builder, has been trying for years to increase career and technical education options for the majority of the district’s students who do not immediately go on to college after graduating from high school.

Four days a week, the district will bus charter students to the community college campus to take advantage of the college’s extensive vocational education course offerings; the district will provide a teacher to handle core academic courses on the fifth day. With access to both Lucerne Valley High School and local community college courses, Career Academy students “get the best of both worlds,” Courtney says.

“I know that many school board members are unhappy with charters,” he says. “We had a charter in the high desert area that was a major fiasco. The operator was spending public money on bullets and jet skis.”

Setting up a district charter has been a big job, Courtney says, “But we’ve hired a charter expert as school administrator to make sure our charter contains all the elements required by law. The school stays within our boundaries and under our control. Our students get classes we could never have offered on our own, and at the same time, they’re even eligible to play sports at the high school. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

This was the way proponents of California’s 1992 groundbreaking charter school law—including its author, state Sen. Gary Hart—hoped things would work out: with both charters and traditional districts celebrating the innovation and flexibility that these new schools brought to public education.

But nearly 14 years after California became the second state in the nation to legalize charters, it’s hard to find many school board members or charter school proponents who would describe their relationship as a “win-win.”

A lightning rod for controversy
Charter schools, as Rand analysts concluded in a recent report, have proven to be “a lightning rod for controversy” that’s driven by extreme rhetoric on both sides of the debate.
When it comes to the overall educational impact that charters have had thus far, experts say, charters have proven neither to be a magical “silver bullet” that fixes all that’s wrong with public schools nor the public education nemesis that some had feared. 

“Charters are not the be-all or end-all,” says former state senator Dede Alpert, who is also a former school board member. “They’re just another way to improve public education.”

Alpert serves on the governing council of San Diego’s Gompers Charter Middle School, one of the first schools in the nation to be reorganized as a charter school after falling into Program Improvement under the No Child Left Behind Act. Although she doesn’t think charters have delivered everything supporters promised, she does believe these schools can play a crucial role in improving opportunities for some students.

“I was in the Legislature when the charter law was introduced, and I voted for it because I thought that charters would be the laboratory schools that would improve the entire system,” says Alpert. “These schools would develop on a small scale practices that would be adopted by districts. Over the years that hasn’t worked.”

Charters have succeeded, she adds, in giving parents more educational options. As a Gompers board member, Alpert has seen firsthand how reopening a traditional school as a charter has completely transformed the campus culture in a persistently failing school that was dirty, dangerous and understaffed. Thus far, students’ academic improvement has been consistent, though modest.

The charter dream
Back when the charter law was being debated in the state Legislature, Hart and other charter supporters argued that charters had the potential to benefit all California public school students—whether they attended charter schools or not.

Freed from cumbersome regulations, charters could function as laboratories for innovation and serve students who were struggling in traditional school settings. Charters could serve as an effective defense against vouchers, Hart reasoned, by providing greater choice for public school parents who might otherwise enroll their children in private schools. District and county boards would retain some measure of local control as charter authorizers, rejecting charter petitions that didn’t measure up and approving those with the best chances of delivering a sound educational program.

Hart expected that districts would jump at the chance to create their own charter schools, and perhaps even to become charter districts, in order to get out from under some major state and federal regulations.
“When I introduced the bill, the California Education Code ran something like 6,000 pages,” Hart remembers. “I heard so many complaints from school officials that they spent all their time dealing with what Sacramento sent their way, that they were becoming bureaucrats rather than educators. I expected to see districts chartering schools and becoming charter districts. That hasn’t happened.”

Hart says there were other developments he didn’t expect: the rise of home-school charters (“Something that, frankly, I’m not crazy about”) and the advent of large “entrepreneurial” operations by education management organizations that have established multiple (and in many cases, highly successful) charters throughout the state. He’s gratified that so many of the state’s charters are located in inner-city neighborhoods and aimed specifically at improving educational outcomes for students in the lowest-performing schools.

Hungry for choice
Hart may have guessed wrong about some aspects of the charter movement in California. But he was right in thinking that parents were hungry for more public school choice. Much as some critics might wish otherwise, charter schools are here to stay.

With 621 schools and an enrollment of 220,000 students who live in 49 of the state’s 58 counties, California has more charters and more charter students than any other state in the nation. One in 20 California schools is a charter, the state reports, and one in 50 students attends a charter school.

Huge urban districts like San Diego and Los Angeles and smaller districts like Chula Vista, Lucerne Valley and Nevada City have developed constructive relationships with a diverse array of distinctive charter schools, and many have established thriving charter schools of their own—just as Hart envisioned.

California charters are operated both by large education management organizations like Aspire and Green Dot, which have campuses throughout the state, and by parents, teachers and education activists who have organized to create a single charter and to expand educational options for local students. 

Scores of parents are delighted with opportunities that charters afford: Among other selections, students can enroll in cyber-academies, combine home schooling with more conventional classroom instruction, or focus on the arts, music, computers, Spanish or Mandarin.

The cost of charter growth
But many school board members, teacher union representatives and district administrators complain that, in too many cases, the explosive growth of California’s charters has come at the expense of the vast majority of students who have opted to remain in traditional public schools. With more and more districts facing the budgetary woes caused by declining student enrollment, the competition between charters and traditional school districts for resources, facilities and students is increasingly tense.

“I think there’s a lot of fear and misunderstanding on both sides,” says Marta Reyes, who headed the California Department of Education’s Charter School division until her retirement earlier this year. “Districts fear that charters are going to ruin their programs, take over their facilities. I say, ‘No, only if you let them.’ Districts certainly understand the pain that charters can cause. But they often don’t understand the opportunities that charters present.”

Reyes urges districts to consider chartering their own schools so they can take advantage of generous federal charter subsidies, and to consider what fee-based services they might be able to market to charters. Districts could open their professional development programs to charter teachers, for example, generating revenue for the districts and improving the quality of instruction for students who attend the charters, Reyes says. 
(Many districts already collect fees for the oversight and administrative tasks they perform for charters, although critics complain that state reimbursement for mandated charter oversight does not cover the actual costs of providing the services.)

Hart says California’s charter law was deliberately written in broad terms on the assumption that the policy specifics would be refined over time. In the years since his bill became law, court decisions and clean-up legislation have further defined the local district authority and obligations.
Local boards and charters have sparred over money, rules for evaluating charter petitions and appealing denials, and whether charter operators who obtain a charter from one local board should be allowed to open campuses in other districts without getting approval from all affected school boards.

Debate over Prop. 39 rules
Some of the most recent policy debates have centered on new Proposition 39 regulations that set terms under which districts must provide facilities to charter schools. The new rules were recently approved by the charter-friendly majority of the state Board of Education—but only over the strenuous objections of CSBA and other members of the Education Coalition, who have threatened to challenge the regulations in court. At press time, those rules were under review by the Office of Administrative Law.

“Our members feel that the state Board of Education is bending so far to accommodate charters, which serve 3 percent of the public school population, that districts are faced with cutting programs for the 97 percent of students in traditional schools,” says Stephanie Farland, CSBA’s senior policy analyst, who submitted similar comments to the state board during public hearings on the new regulations.
In the years immediately after passage of California’s charter school law, charters in some areas of the state could legitimately complain that powerful and entrenched education interests were standing in the way of innovation and charter school development.

“We often feel that the money and the facilities are ours, and that we as school board members are trustees of those resources for the children,” says David Tokofsky, a former school board member in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been an especially fertile region for charter school development.
“When someone comes in and says: ‘We can do better. Give us the land, the revenue and the kids,’ this doesn’t set things up for a peaceful problem-solving relationship.”
Tokofsky, a former public school teacher, works as a part-time consultant to Green Dot Charters, which operates some of the district’s highest-achieving schools.
School boards are more apt to respond favorably to charter applicants who have a positive vision for improving education, Tokofsky says, rather than those who are “running away from something.”
Caprice Young, another former LAUSD school board member who now heads the California Charter Schools Association, says districts need to stop looking at charters as the enemy. “Charter students are public school students,” she says. “Some school board defensiveness comes from a mistaken belief that when a student chooses a charter, the student is leaving the district. That’s not true. The traditional school board still has a role; it’s just changed.”

A difficult relationship
In some ways the relationship between charters and districts is inherently and appropriately difficult, says Alan Bersin, a member of the state board who served for a year as education secretary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Charters were designed to put competitive pressure on traditional schools, he says, and competition is stressful.
“It’s not surprising that school districts perceive charters to be competitors and that charter schools perceive districts to be unfair,” says Bersin, who established a number of acclaimed charter schools during his tenure as superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District. “I don’t see the tension as unhealthy. I do think there needs to be a constant check to see that the competition is fair.”
He also can understand why critics believe the balance of power in Sacramento has shifted too far toward charters: In some cases, he adds, the critics are right.

“If you talk to charter school proponents, you will find that for many years charter schools felt that the government was not implementing the law faithfully, and that the playing field was not level,” he says. “The efforts of the state board, which I think have been to address charter school concerns, have led to precisely the same contention being made by the Education Coalition—which is that the playing field is not level.”

A ‘win-lose’ for districts
Bersin agrees that new Proposition 39 regulations have created special difficulties for districts with declining enrollment, resulting in a “win-lose situation, so that when charter schools receive facilities from districts, it is a net loss for the district.”

“For that reason,” he continues, “you find that districts resist sharing facilities with charter schools. It seems to me that this reluctance reflects a very genuine reaction to a situation in which a charter school gain is a district loss.”

However, Bersin says he believes the new state board Proposition 39 regulations represent necessary “revisions” to the facilities law. Bersin recommends that “all stakeholders,” including members of the Education Coalition and charter school representatives, begin negotiating “hard-headed” agreements that provide facilities for charters without unduly burdening existing district programs. He also says the Legislature may have to consider changes in the law and regulations to compensate districts for making facilities available to charters.
“There is a resolution that’s possible here that would be win-win,” he says. “One could imagine a situation in which districts that had inadequate enrollment and transferred facilities to a charter school … would get incentive points for the modernization of their own facilities.”

Still, in districts that are losing students, charter schools can make it even more difficult to balance local budgets. Losing per-pupil funding is painful enough. In situations where a local board has made the agonizing decision to close a school because of declining enrollment, a charter school application from disgruntled parents

can make a bad situation even worse.
At first glance, it may seem entirely reasonable that parents who love their childrens’ schools should go to great lengths to save them. “The problem is that if the district is forced to provide that facility to a charter school, the district has to cut elsewhere,” says Anne White, a school board member in Livermore, where parents successfully appealed to the state after the local district and county boards rejected their charter school application. “No one wants to close schools. These decisions are made in the best interests of the district as a whole, with the needs of all students in mind.”

Daunting oversight responsibilities
Other regulations set districts up for a tough relationship with charters.
School districts and county offices of education authorize the vast majority of charters, ensuring that charter applications include elements required by state law. State law also specifies that districts are responsible for overseeing charter operations and for making sure that charters are delivering quality educational services and making appropriate use of public money.

But in recent years, the state board has taken an increasingly active role in the chartering process, approving charter petitions on appeal after local districts and county offices have rejected them.
Some of the petitions approved by the state board on appeal are clearly struggling (see “A Tale of Two Charters,” page 23). “Sometimes the locals are right when they deny a charter,” says Farland.

The state board has also begun approving petitions for statewide benefit charters, a new category of schools authorized by the state board to deliver specialized services across district lines. CSBA and other critics complain that the law authorizing such charters was designed for very specific circumstances—circumstances that the first two statewide benefit charters granted did not meet. Instead, they argue, the board is using the law so that charter operators can bypass local district and county boards altogether. Instead of bothering with local boards, the state board is encouraging petitioners to apply directly to the state.

Local control, however, can be a mixed blessing. Chartering authority gives districts more of a say over what happens in their respective communities and enables school boards to better safeguard tax dollars and students’ welfare. Many boards feel their commitment to all public schoolchildren requires that they play an active role in charter oversight.

At the same time, the job of authorizing and overseeing charters means more work for governing boards and staff—and the job can be overwhelming. School boards and administrative staff must meet tight deadlines and track charter schools’ finances and the academic progress of their students.

Charter schools association President Young says her organization has stepped in to help districts close bad charter schools and to negotiate workable agreements between charters and their authorizing districts. “I have also intervened to advocate for charters that were being treated unfairly,” she says.

The charter association has spent three years developing a certification program that Young says will be a powerful tool to help with charter school evaluation and oversight. “The state now uses our rubric to review charter petitions and ensure they include the 16 elements required by law,” she says.

San Diego is one district that is negotiating with the association to help relieve the administrative burden that comes with charter school oversight. San Diego Superintendent Carl Cohn, who is not nearly as excited about charters as his predecessor Bersin, would like to get out of the chartering business altogether. He says the district simply doesn’t have the staff, time or resources to oversee all the charters in San Diego.

What’s good for the goose …
CSBA and others unhappy with the current charter school policy climate say an infusion of state support for local school districts and county offices of education could eliminate some of the stress. The San Diego situation notwithstanding, most school boards believe it’s crucial that local boards retain chartering authority and continue to supervise the charter schools that educate their students.

“We would, however, like to see the state recognize the real cost of charter review and oversight and compensate districts accordingly,” CSBA’s Farland says. When districts and county offices have to dip into their local budgets to cover the costs of reviewing charter applications and evaluating charter programs, it impacts programs for the remainder of the district’s students.

Farland and other charter policy experts also argue that the state could go a long way toward easing the troubled relationship between charters and districts by freeing all schools from what many see as excessive regulations. “Getting Down to Facts,” the recent studies commissioned by the governor, state Superintendent Jack O’Connell and legislative leaders, concluded that top-down state and federal regulations make it all but impossible for California’s public schools to do their jobs. Among other things, the report recommended freeing all schools from prescriptive edicts and directives so they can respond to local conditions and address the unique needs of their students.

“If successful charters have demonstrated the value of getting rid of red tape and cumbersome regulation,” Farland says, “why not make that happen for all schools? If it’s good for charter schools, it probably is also good for traditional schools operated by local districts and county offices.”