INNOVATION—Charter Schools: Are They The Answer?

0

Fixing the sorry state of L.A. public schools it’s at the top of almost every local leader’s agenda, including those of all six major mayoral candidates.

And among the most frequently proposed solutions is to establish more charter schools. There are currently only about 50 such schools operating in Los Angeles County, 37 of which are in Los Angeles Unified School District territory. (By comparison, LAUSD has more than 600 schools and there are more than 1,200 K-12 schools in L.A. County.)

Charter schools do not charge tuition. They get their funding from state and federal grants, and they operate independently of the public school system. But they are audited annually, and their operating charters are subject to renewal every five years.

The schools tend to perform better than their conventional public school counterparts when it comes to test scores, with nearly 60 percent ranking above average when compared to schools across the state with similar demographics. And as charter schools governed by state law, they do have somewhat more flexibility than traditional schools within the public school system.

In L.A., that greater independence from the huge LAUSD bureaucracy is seen as a way to give parents a chance at a quality education for their children without having to fork over thousands of dollars for a private school.

But the track record of charter schools in L.A. is rather modest. It has only been about eight years since California first authorized the formation of charter schools, and the program is only now staring to get off the ground.

“Charter schools show a lot of promise, but the jury is really out on whether charter schools are working and, if so, how much of a solution they can provide to the education crisis,” said Gib Hentschke, professor of education and management at USC.


Much to overcome

But there are serious roadblocks to blanketing the region with charter schools. Foremost among these is the exact same problem the LAUSD itself is facing as it grapples with exploding enrollment: finding and paying for enough facilities to house dozens of classrooms, labs, athletic facilities and other necessities of a school.

“This is the single biggest obstacle to charter school formation,” said Anita Landecker, executive director of Excellent Education Development, a not-for-profit company providing business management services for charter schools in Southern California.

In fact, this is the main reason why most of the 37 designated charter schools in LAUSD aren’t really charter schools in the classic sense. By state law, they are bound by five-year charter agreements and cannot charge tuition. But 27 of the charter schools in LAUSD are not truly independent entities. They rely on the LAUSD for the lion’s share of their funding and the district exerts considerable control over the selection of administrators.

The reason for the tether to LAUSD is simple: money.

“Fiscal issues are the key reason for going the dependent-charter-school route,” said Grace Arnold, coordinator for the LAUSD’s charter schools division. “Most of those proposing charter schools simply can’t afford to make it work without the district funding, especially in an urban area like Los Angeles where space is so hard to find.”

And it’s not just finding space; there are also considerable start-up costs like those incurred to recruit students, teachers and administrators.

Most of the dependent charter schools in L.A. are in two large clusters: the 17-school Crenshaw-Dorsey cluster in South Central L.A. and the Palisades Complex of eight schools in the Brentwood/Pacific Palisades area.


Funding issues

Only 10 schools in LAUSD territory are classic charter schools that rely on sources of funding outside the district chiefly state or federal grant dollars and are free to pick their teachers and administrators at will. Seven of those were started from scratch, including the 2-year-old View Park Preparatory Accelerated Charter School in the Crenshaw district.

Finding their own space proved a formidable task for View Park officials.

“We’re currently leasing space in the Angeles Mesa Church and our kindergarten classes are held at leased offices at the Foundation for the Junior Blind just down the street,” said Jamie Cullen, View Park’s development director.

Despite the obvious difficulties with funding and facilities, Cullen said View Park, through its parent foundation, is planning a capital campaign in the hopes of expanding from a K-6 to a K-12 school over the next several years.

View Park is not alone. In the last couple of years, applications for independent charter schools have picked up, with more than 20 state-approved petitions currently before the LAUSD. Many will be dropped for various reasons mostly financial but LAUSD charter division chief Jeannie Ramos said she expects six to nine of them will actually get to the school board.

Contrary to fears that charter schools would skim off the cream of the crop, many of these independent charter schools are being set up in low-income areas. View Park opened in the Crenshaw District, not far from the Crenshaw-Dorsey dependent charter cluster, while Montague Charter School is in Pacoima.

“Charter schools are going into the areas that most need them,” USC’s Hentschke said.

But as to whether they are working, Hentschke said the results have not quite lived up to the hype that charter school proponents have touted.

“You can safely say that charter schools are not performing worse as a group than the traditional schools,” he said. “But since so many of the schools have only been around for two or three years, the jury is still out on overall performance.


Test scores are up

The early results look promising, though. In looking over the 2000 Stanford 9 test scores, six out of 26 charter schools in LAUSD territory received a 9 or 10 on a 1-to-10 scale (with 10 being best) when compared to schools with similar demographics. That’s well above the average 5-6 range for that set of schools. Another nine of the charter schools received a 7 or 8, classified as “above average.”

Only two charter schools received a 1 or 2, meaning they were well below average, while five received a 3 or 4.

(Eleven charter schools in LAUSD jurisdiction were not ranked because they were either too small or had been in existence less than a full year.)

But Hentschke said the appeal of charter schools goes beyond mere test scores.

“When I talk to parents, they are not concerned as much with whether this test score is higher than that one; they really care about safety and the more personal nature of charter schools,” he said. But charter schools also have a major downside, one that so far has been much more pronounced outside of Los Angeles: They are prone to financial scandal and mismanagement. Reports have surfaced all too frequently of charter schools in other states or counties where administrators have diverted funds for personal use or simply squandered the funds on projects that ultimately failed.

Allegations of fraud and mismanagement also hit two L.A.-area charter schools in the mid-1990s, prompting revocations of their charters. But those were early on in the charter school program, when controls were still being set up.


Free of scandal

Since then, the L.A. area appears to have been free of the outright charter school fraud seen in other parts of the country. The reason is twofold: State law requires annual audits and a comprehensive outside evaluation every five years, before the charter can be renewed. Also, with so many dependent charter schools, whose funding and administrative selection comes directly from LAUSD headquarters, there is less opportunity for unscrupulous businesspeople to walk away with funds.

But true accountability of charter schools is another matter. When the eight dependent charter schools in the Palisades Complex came up for renewal last year, an outside firm was brought in to evaluate their progress. And judging that progress was hard to do, according to Michael Butler, a charter school evaluator with Pasadena-based Public Works Inc.

“The original charter provisions were somewhat vague when it came to specific measurable goals or outcomes, so it was difficult to evaluate whether the schools were effective in achieving those goals,” Butler said. As an example, he cited one charter school’s goal of “creating environmentally responsible citizens.”

“How do you measure that in an objective sense? Do you count up beach-cleanup trips or number of cans recycled?” he asked.

Palisades area test scores, which had always been higher than the statewide average in the relatively wealthy suburb, did remain high. But, Butler said, there was little closing of the achievement gap between whites and minorities, particularly Latinos and African Americans.

“What happened with those schools is that, once they got up and running, a number of white students whose parents had taken them out of public schools and put them in private schools returned to the charter schools,” Butler said. ”

No posts to display