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“I am not a charter school fan” Joe Biden declared in his 2020 presidential campaign. That’s disappointing, but not surprising, coming from the self proclaimed “most pro-union president” in history.
His would-be successor, Kamala Harris seems to still be equivocating, as is her wont, over her position on charter schools. But she has the enthusiastic support of the teachers’ unions, so that’s a bad sign too.
Her dilemma is that the teachers’ unions, the political partners of the Democrats, are dead-set in their opposition to charter schools for two reasons: They expose the education failures of the union-dominated district schools and most charter school teachers aren’t unionized and therefore don’t pay union dues.
Charter schools, first created in the 1990s, are publicly funded but independently administered. They don’t charge tuition and aren’t allowed to “cherry-pick” the best students.
Charter school opponents could once claim that charter schools “don’t work” to improve academic outcomes. But we know now that this is simply not the case.
Stanford’s Center for Research in Education Outcomes (CREDO) released a 2023 report tracking charter school outcomes over 15 years. The study covered 2 million charter school students in 29 states with a control group in district schools. It is arguably the most comprehensive, credible study ever done of charter schools.
The conclusion was decisive. Most charter schools “produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population”.
CREDO’s first study in 2009 showed no improvement in student outcomes from charters, a result still cited as evidence that charters fail to help those deemed “uneducable” by some. However each subsequent CREDO report has shown improvement and superior performance overall.
New York charter school students gained 75 days of reading improvement and 73 in math each year compared with traditional schools. In Washington state, the numbers were 29 days in reading and 30 in math. In Illinois, it was 40 in reading, 48 in math.
The recent study also showed that black and Hispanic students achieved disproportionately large gains. A section in the CREDO report described several “gap-busting schools” that educate students from underprivileged backgrounds to perform at the same level as white peers. So much for the myth of “uneducable” students.
The overall statistics would be even better if not for the 15% of charter schools that underperform their local district schools. The telling difference is that failing charter schools can be and are closed. Failing district schools keep on failing year after year.
There is even more good news. Charter schools benefit even those students who do not attend them. According to an analysis by the Fordham Foundation, at least 12 studies indicate that the scores for all publicly enrolled students in a geographic region rise when the number of charter schools increases. Moreover, neighboring schools that don’t experience academic improvement often showed progress in school attendance and behavioral problems due to competing with charters.
The reason is obvious. The mere presence of choices for parents breaks the district school monopoly. Competition brings more accountability and a “customer orientation” that benefits everybody.
It’s no coincidence that, while traditional public schools have lost students, charter schools have gained over 300,000 students over the last five years. But the institutional opponents of charter schools are unmoved by the good news. The growth of charters would undoubtedly be even greater if not for the relentless opposition of the teachers union/Democratic Party axis.
Ironically, for charter school opponents, charters are highly popular with the working class and ethnic minority constituencies they claim to champion. A poll this May by Democrats for Education Reform found that 80% of black parents and 71% of Hispanics had a favorable view of charters, as well they should.
But the teachers’ unions don’t give away their formidable political support and they clearly dominate educational policy-making with today’s Democrats. The Biden/Harris administration has continued a program of budget cuts and onerous regulations for charter schools, including a proposed reduction for the Charter Schools Program, which provides grants and was even supported by the Clinton and Obama administrations.
The Democrats — and all of us — have a clear choice to make between the needs of students versus the demands of the teachers’ unions.
Discussion (8)
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Democrats have become the party of the government bureaucrat
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Government schools are not a public good. Look up the definition of public good. They don't even come close. Government schools are primarily a vehicle for the unions to capture. If you cut a check to the parents instead, the aggregate value would go straight up.
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We will NOT allow Charter Schools to exist! They makes us look bad!
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Democrats have chosen, and the teacher unions won. After all, teachers can vote and students can't . . .
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I have repeated this opinion many times. Even though my personal experience is more than thirty years old, I think it still relevant.
Our children attended a government elementary school that drew mostly from a very wealthy area, so private school was a realistic option for most of the children who attended that school. We were not at the time wealthy, and lived on "the other side of the tracks". The school administration and teachers were clearly aware that for most of the families in that school's area, private school was a realistic option, and the government school staff worked really hard to be at least as good as, if not better than, the private school options, and made it clear to the parents that they knew that they were in competition with the private schools. My children at the government school benefited from that competition.
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