Charter schools have been in the news quite a bit in the past year, especially here in Atlanta: the unfunded pension litigation involving APS and all Atlanta start-up charter schools, APS board candidates being asked their views on charter schools, the constitutional amendment passed last fall to create a state commission in Georgia that could approve new charter schools. Inevitably, coverage of charter schools prompts debate about whether charter schools are “better” than traditional public schools and also can reveal people’s misconceptions about what charter schools are and are not.
Atlanta Neighborhood Charter School is a charter school–it’s right there in our name. So, I’m often the recipient of questions about charter schools, especially in the midst of debates about them. I don’t purport to be an expert on charter schools, but, having worked in a few of them (as well as in some traditional public schools), I can speak to what my experiences have shown me about some of the questions I’ve been asked and clarify some misinformation I often hear.
First off, charter schools are public schools of choice that are funded using tax dollars. Although charter schools have been around for almost two decades in Georgia, I still encounter people who think charter schools are private schools and that tuition must be paid for students to enroll, neither of which is true. And while the particulars of how charter schools come to exist and operate differs from state to state (here’s a link to a pretty clear FAQ from the Georgia DOE about charter schools in our state), in general a “charter” is granted to a school and its governing board that provides the school with some degree of flexibility from state education rules and regulations in exchange for meeting certain accountability requirements.
I often have people tell me that they are drawn to our school or other charter schools because they like “the charter school model”. Yet, aside from what the state of Georgia defines as the requirements of a “charter school”, there is no one charter school “model”–most charter schools are quite different from one another. I also am frequently asked whether I think charter schools are “better” than traditional public schools. It is clear to me that there can be–and are–ineffective charter schools just as there can be–and are–ineffective traditional public schools. And effective ones in each category too. Among the effective charter schools I have seen, what seems to be fairly consistent is that these schools use their autonomy to (1) limit the bureaucratic demands on school leaders and teachers so that they may respond quickly and flexibly to what’s best for students and (2) genuinely involve parents and school faculty/staff to some degree in the making of key decisions for the school. There may be differences among successful charter schools, but these two factors often seem to be present where there are high levels of student learning and high levels of satisfaction among students, parents, and teachers.
Yet the two factors above are also what’s been present–again, in my experience–among traditional public schools that show strong student learning and have a community happy with the school. School choice and market forces appear to matter less for school success than giving skilled principals and teachers the room to do their best work without burdensome and unnecessary command and control edicts and placing real power in the hands of the school community to make informed decisions about their school.
Charter schools are often described as being “labs of innovation” from whom traditional public schools can learn. That may well be true, but, perhaps there is just as much for school districts to learn from effective charter schools about how to support and equip school leaders and teachers with the autonomy and flexibility that’s been proven to work.