Should We Expand the Charter School Program in Wake County?

This week the NC Senate passed a bill to remove the cap on charter schools in North Carolina, which had previously been limited to 100 statewide.  The following are some of the arguments for and against expanding the charter school program, based on statistics for Wake County students:

PROS

Charter Schools Are Popular

Although Wake County already has the largest number of charter schools than any other county in North Carolina, those 13 charters can not come close to meeting the demand.  For example, Raleigh Carter High School advises new students they have about a 13% chance of getting into the 535-member school.    Applicants faced even worse odds attempting to enter Franklin Academy in Wake Forest.   In 2009, 1,842 students competed for 123 open spots, which represents only a 7% acceptance rate.  Even though the school expanded in 2010 to provide more openings, Franklin Academy reports that there are still about 2,000 students on its waiting list.

The existing charter schools only enroll a total of about 6,000 students.  However, the high application rate indicates that many more families would choose a charter school for their children if there were additional space available.

Charter Schools Are Innovative

Freed from some of the regulatory restrictions of traditional public schools, charter schools can experiment with new approaches and curricula, although they must still conform to the NC Standard Course of Study and participate in End of Grade (EOG) Testing.

Charter Schools Outperform Traditional Schools

While national studies have not shown a clear academic advantage in comparing average charter school student performance to their peers in schools, charter schools in Wake County do seem to have better average test scores.  According to the Wake Education Partnership, in 2007-08, 74% of students in Wake charters were performing at grade level, compared to 70% of general Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) students and 65% of students in public magnet programs.  Similar results were reported in 2008-09, when 81% of Wake County charter students were at grade level, compared to 76% of WCPSS students and 65% of magnet students.

CONS

Charters Reduce Diversity

Charter schools are much more racially unbalanced than traditional Wake County schools.  The Wake County Public School System reports that in 2010-11, approximately 50% of WCPSS students are White, 25% are Black, 15% are Hispanic, 6% were Asian, and 4% are mixed or other.  

However, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction states that among the 13 charter schools in Wake County, seven have enrollments that are 75% or higher White students, while three others have enrollments that are 75% or higher Black students.  Only three charter schools--Casa Esperanza, Southern Wake Academy, and Sterling Montessori--have a more racially mixed student population, although even those schools have a disproportionately high number of White students. 

Charters Do Not Serve Low-Income or Special Needs Students

Charter schools receive a per-student payment for educational expenses, but not for building and facilities expenses.  Therefore, they are not required to have cafeterias, nor must they participate in the free or reduced lunch programs designed to support low-income students.  

Charters do not have to provide transportation for students, which can effectively eliminate students from families who do not live nearby and who not own a car or other means to get their children to school.  Finally, charters do not have to offer services to students with special needs, such as learning disabilities or autism.

Charters Will Drain the Public Schools of Resource if Expanded Dramatically

Currently, Wake County charter schools only enroll about 6,000 students, compared to the 140,000+ students in the WCPSS.  Thus, the issues of racial imbalances in charter school or the relatively small numbers of low-income or special needs students in charters don’t have a large impact on the entire school system.  However, critics warn that as the program grows, it could continue to drain off the most affluent and successful students, leaving the public school system to deal with larger percentages of more challenging student populations, such as the low-income, non-English-speaking, and learning disabled students.  

New Research Supports Critics of Wake County School Board Neighborhood Schools Policy

A new research study released on October 15, 2010 by The Century Foundation gives additional ammunition to the critics of the Wake County School Board's new efforts to move from economic diversity to neighborhood proximity as the basis for assignments to schools.  The report, "Housing Policy is School Policy," shows that students from low socioeconomic backgrounds achieve significantly higher scores on standardized tests if they attend schools with low percentages of poverty when compared to their peers in high poverty schools, even though the latter students are targeted with much greater resources. 

The study spent seven years following the educational progress of 858 elementary school students living in public housing in Montgomery County, Maryland.  Montgomery County, a suburb of Washington, DC (where I used to live), is generally a very affluent and educated bedroom community for the Nation’s capitol; its demographics are very similar to the average population in Cary, NC, the affluent and educated bedroom community for the state’s capitol (which is where I live now).  However, Montgomery County does one thing very differently; it requires developers to include public housing units along with all its middle/upper-middle class, or even elite development projects.  Families applying for public housing are assigned to the different projects on a lottery basis.  

Therefore, about half of the students in the study ended up going to a neighborhood school (possible because the neighborhoods themselves were socioeconomically diverse, due to the Montgomery County housing policy) where less than 20% of students qualified for the free school lunch program.  The other half went to schools considered to be high-poverty because up to 60% of all students qualified for subsidized meals.  This case is also special because since the housing is done by lottery, the students are distributed randomly between the two groups (as opposed to, for example, most charter schools, who enroll students of parents who motivated enough to jump through the hoops necessary to get their children into such special programs).

At the end of seven years, the poor students in the low-poverty schools has narrowed the gap between them and middle class or higher students by 50% in math and by 30% in reading.  They achieved these gains even though the county gave the high-poverty schools an additional $2,000 per student for supplemental educational resources.  Or, looking at it from the other perspective, an estimated $858,000 or so in additional funds targeted for high-poverty school students produced no effect, at least compared to simply sending them to low-poverty schools.

In truth, this is not a surprising discovery for professional educators.  The original groundbreaking study of school inequality, the 1966 “Equality of Educational Opportunities” publication known as the Coleman Report, showed that the best predictors of student success in school were:

#1--Parental Income (of course, homeschoolers are an anomaly sub-popular in that regard) and

#2--Socioeconomic Status of the School attended. 

In the nearly 45 years since that report, the data on the family’s socioeconomic status has not changed.   Parental income still makes the biggest difference, statistically, in a student’s success than any other demographic feature--race, age, gender, etc.  This study suggests that the second one has not changed either.

So the School Board can say what they like about ensuring the success of low-income students.  But the research says that they are dismantling the system that has proven to be most effective is supporting those students.  And even if there is extra money available to support additional resources for the high-poverty schools that would be created in high-poverty neighborhoods, it doesn't seem like it will produce any increase in educational achievement, at least in comparison to allowing them to remain in economically diverse schools.