What Citizens Need to Know About Choice and Charter Schools

What Citizens Need to Know About Choice and Charter Schools

With the progression of education reform, more and more parents are beginning to hear the terms choice and charter. State legislatures are being sold on these concepts on the premise that they give parents more options in the education of their child. At face value, this is the impression. But is this the reality?

One clue-in to the push for charters and choice comes in their timing. Never before in the history of education have these options been so advocated. Parents, citizens, taxpayers should ask why.

The charter school bills that are being pushed have component parts that should give parents, citizens, and taxpayers cause for concern:

Charter schools will be run by private non-profit corporations. This could be a local, state, national, or foreign corporation registered as a non-profit under the Uniform Tax Code of the United States. There is already one foreign corporation establishing charter schools in the United States. This could also be the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) or the National Alliance for Restructuring Education (NARE) — both of which are non-profit corporations. This could also be a business or a consortium of businesses that establish an entity with non-profit status.
Charter schools will be run using taxpayer dollars. Coupled with the fact that these schools will be exempted from most state laws and regulations that govern other schools amounts to the use of tax dollars without accountability to the taxpayers. In other states, problems are already surfacing with regard to how the money the charters are receiving is being spent.
Charter schools will be run by private boards of directors. Public schools were established with an elected board of directors to make them accountable to the taxpayers. Private boards of directors are not elected and they are not accountable to the taxpayers.
Charter schools are exempt from most state statutes and regulations that govern other public schools. This exempts them from public disclosure laws; laws and regulations which give parents control over what their child is taught in the classroom; laws that give parents access to curriculums, supplemental teaching materials and surveys that their child could be exposed to in the classroom; laws that give parents access to their child's school records; and laws that give parents access to the classroom. Charter schools will also be exempt from laws and regulations that prohibit them from supporting or opposing a ballot issue or candidate.

If charters are really in the best interests of parents, citizens, and taxpayers, why are they being exempted from those provisions which provide measures of accountability to and protection for parents, citizens and taxpayers?

Charter schools, while peddled as giving parents choice, actually use the authority of the people via legislation to move education beyond the authority of the people via funding mechanisms, non-elected school boards, and waivers from existing laws that govern other public schools.

Charters also undermine the checks and balances imperative to our form of government, and establish taxation without representation.

Besides these concerns, other concerns have also surfaced with regard to charter schools. Usually some mechanism is written into law for the change-over of a public school to a charter school. Citizens need to be concerned about how this is done. Is the public school changed to a charter school by general election ballot issue or by some other method? If the change is made by other than a general election ballot issue, taxation without representation occurs since taxpayers had no voice in the changeover even though their tax dollars will continue to pay for the newly established charter school.

Citizens also need to ask what provision will be made for those children whose parents do not want them in a charter school. Many small towns only have one elementary, middle, and secondary school. If one or all of these becomes a charter, where will the children whose parents don't want them in a charter school go to school? Will the state make some provision for the transportation of those children to a school of the parents' choice? If not, the state is violating the right of those children to equal opportunity and equal access. If such provision is made, what will the cost be?

Another concern, if a public school is changed to a charter school, is what provision will be made for the publicly owned buildings. Will those buildings become the property of the private non-profit corporation? If so, what mechanism will be established for this transfer? How would this align with the state constitution?

If the buildings are maintained in the public trust and the charter school is housed in the building, who controls the building and grounds, and who maintains them?

If charters are not allowed in the public buildings, what provision will be made to house them? Will they be given access to state building funds? Would such violate the state constitution?

Citizens also need to question whether giving charters waivers from existing state law would violate the state constitution. In Washington state, the constitution (Article IX § 2) states that [t]he legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools.

Likewise, citizens should ask what provision will be made for children should the charter school close its doors overnight (as has already happened in Arizona).

Charter schools are advocated by Goals 2000, section 308, stating further in 308(d) that

Any new public school established under this title (3) shall operate under the authority of the State educational agency or local educational agency.

Charter schools are generally considered to be public schools by definition. Section 306(c) states that …

Each State educational agency shall establish and include in its State improvement plan strategies for meeting the National Education Goals …

In most states, the local education agency is under the auspices of the state educational agency. What this means is that charter schools, whether under the authority of the local educational agency or state education agency, must comply with the mandates of Goals 2000 and the respective state education reform law (which aligns with Goals 2000). Some state education reform laws (Washington State being one) also mandate school-to-work as a component part of education reform. This would, then, also become a component part of the charter school.

So, with all this, why the push for charter schools? In the total quality concept of education, as established by Goals 2000 and state education reform laws, where the new mission of the school is to meet the needs of the new customer of education — business, such cannot be accomplished in full measure when mechanisms remain in place which maintain accountability to the people. Charter schools remove those accountability measures.

Too, charters are being pushed by businesses who realize the benefit of establishing a charter school for the purpose of providing human capital specifically trained for their benefit. Charter schools could be established by a business or a consortium of businesses.

Choice is another concept that is being pushed. On the surface, choice looks like a grand idea as it allows parents who are dissatisfied with a school or school district to move their child to another school or school district. Yet their voting franchise is still maintained in the district in which they live.

Choice, then, becomes a mechanism by which parents are disenfranchised. If parents are dissatisfied with the school or school district in which they live and vote, because of what is, or is not, going on in the school, because of run-ins with administration, etc, they are "encouraged" in a variety of ways, to go to another school. By so doing, they have no voice, either in the school they change to as they have no voting franchise in that school or school district, or the school they have left as their child no longer goes there. Choice is a very effective way of getting rid of and disenfranchising "problem parents" — parents who will not go along with whatever the school wants to do with their child; who watches what goes on in the classroom, checks school books, homework and school papers; who opts their child out of curriculums they consider offensive; who asks questions and demands answers; who doesn't just go along on the premise that the school is the expert; who takes seriously their responsibility as the primary educator of their child. Charter schools also disenfranchise parents.

As usual with education reform, the rhetoric and the reality of charters and choice are at opposite ends of the spectrum. That the U.S. Department of Education and the President of the United States are pushing charter schools should be a clue-in to state legislators, especially the Republicans, that something is decidedly rotten in Denmark. Yet many Republican legislators continue to blindly push for charters in spite of the evidence that has been provided to them regarding the reality of charters.

What can parents, citizens, and taxpayers do? Legislators need to hear from constituents that charters are not wanted. Many state legislators can't see past the "choice" issue and business lobbies to the reality. It is imperative that they be educated. Charters are very necessary to the "total quality" concept as established by Goals 2000 and state education reform laws. If parents, citizens, and taxpayers ever hope to regain control of their public schools, they must work to defeat charter schools. Once charters are in place, accountability to the public for education will be no more.

Parents, citizens, and taxpayers also need to obtain and keep handy a copy of their state constitution. Charter schools may violate their state constitution. While the current legislative trend seems to be to ignore the state and federal constitutions, a 1991 Supreme Court ruling allows legislators, singularly and severally, to be sued for violating the rights of the people. This may become the only avenue of redress for the people.

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