Charter schools: Ideals vs. gritty reality

 

An interesting article by a well-known syndicated columnist in Arkansas about the charter school debate there and one Democratic state senator's views, which I think are quite representative of concerns we in the charter school movement need to think about and have good answers to.  A very nice mention of KIPP as well...

Opposition to these 11 proposals simmers from an education establishment that wonders why we propose to help under-performing kids in under-performing conventional public schools in economically depressed areas by eroding our support of those conventional public schools and advocating the opening of untested and corporately subsidized alternatives.

This is a complex and politically sensitive matter, obviously. Perhaps I can best explore it through a central character. I'll choose, to his likely discomfort, state Sen. Stephen Bryles of Blytheville.

He's a moderate Democrat and bona fide education reformer noted, among other things, for sponsoring the legislation on public school accountability and the amendment in the recent special session to cushion the financial blow for East Arkansas schools that lose enrollment from year to year.

He is altogether neutral on the pending proposals, but not about KIPP schools, by which he swears. He clings to his dream that Arkansas may get four new KIPP schools by 2009 and that one of them would be in Blytheville.

Bryles said that when it comes to charter schools generally, he lives by two guiding principles. One is that "charter schools are a good and vital component of education reform, but not when they're dealt with willy-nilly or with a broad brush, but only with lots of advance study that doesn't sacrifice kids to a few years of failed experimentation."

The other is that charter schools are especially tricky in the Delta "because special consideration has to be given to two complexities, one being race and the other declining enrollment."

In other words, you need to be careful you don't license charter schools that would function effectively as segregationist academies. And you need to find a way to keep the Delta's conventional public schools adequately funded while you invite their enrollees to bail out for a charter school on the one hand and insist on distributing state aid on a per-pupil basis on the other.

That's why Bryles advocates something that's hard to sell - additional money for school districts in the Delta with declining enrollments. But charter schools can never proceed apace as long as some of the conventional public schools' excuses are valid.

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Charter schools: Ideals vs. gritty reality
Thursday, Nov 16, 2006

By John Brummett

Near the bottom of this space the other day, I invoked the hopeful prospect of KIPP-like charter schools all across the Delta. I called for support toward that end from the Walton Foundation in concert with audacious leadership from our new governor, Mike Beebe.  Today, alas, we must narrow our focus from lofty broad ideals to gritty specific reality.