District of Columbia Public Schools Superintendent Clifford Janey’s recent call for a moratorium on charter schools was a clumsy attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of students from the bottomed-out school system he runs. The city already has 51 charter schools and six more — geared to special needs students, adolescents, boys and even students who want to spend the next six years learning that deadest of white male languages, Latin — will open this year. Three more have been approved for 2007.
Janey echoed the oft-repeated myth, propagated mainly by teachers’ unions, that charter schools drain students and resources from traditional public schools, subtly implying that charter schools are not really public schools, which is nonsense. The crucialdifference between them is not how they’re funded (both receive public money), but who decides how that money is spent — independent boards or a centralized administration.
What Janey really means is that adding more charter schools will further diminish DCPS’ power and influence over education in the District of Columbia. But that’s apparently just fine with the parents of at least 17,500 students — a quarter of the District’s school-aged children — who have already chosen charters.
“Charter schools were never conceived to replace a school district,” Janey said. But this is a district that has, by any measure, radically and comprehensively failed its parents and students via the traditional route. Only 14 of 100 DCPS elementary schools made adequate yearly progress this past school year. Instead of attacking charter schools, Janey and the D.C. Board of Education should seriously consider junking the old model altogether, turning every public school in the city into a charter school and announcing that none of the current union contracts will be renewed.
Desperate times call for dramatic action, not more of the same old education union flim-flam about under-funding, low salaries and over-size classes. Declining enrollment is forcing DCPS to close many under-enrolled schools anyway, so why not take advantage of the opportunity? Instead of the uninspired, cookie-cutter approach, why not do something out of the box, like having regular schools share space with charters, offering parents two options in one facility?
To be sure, charter schools are no panacea; 12 have closed in the District during the past decade for poor performance and financial mismanagement. The latest Department of Education report found that fourth-graders in traditional public schools generally did better than those in charter schools, although two other studies found D.C. charters in particular outperforming their traditional peers. But it’s no accident that the Capital City Public Charter School, a demographically diverse charter school housed in a former church in Columbia Heights, has a waiting list of more than 600 families while DCPS vainly tries to keep more students from fleeing.
