A new analysis from a University of Colorado research center gives D.C.’s public charter school laws a failing grade, criticizing the system for allowing private groups to establish schools and for not encouraging programs for at-risk students.
The new report is a stark contrast to a number of other studies that have put the District near the top of the nation in terms of how it authorizes and checks on public charter schools.
Wendy Chi, one of the new report’s authors, said the big difference is that they tested whether charter schools have lived up to their original intent of greater independence accompanied by greater accountability.
Charter laws also were evaluated on how well they increased student achievement, used innovation in instruction and curriculum, were equitable to potential students and monitored individual schools.
“In the case of D.C., it didn’t perform particularly well on any of the categories,” Chi said.
Josephine Baker, executive director of the board, defended the laws governing D.C.’s charter system in a written statement.
“One of the strengths … is that it provides individual charter schools a reasonable amount of autonomy, while allowing the charter authorizer to hold them to high standards of accountability,” she said.
In the District, any organization can apply to open a charter school. According to Chi, jurisdictions that allow private management organizations lost points in the report she co-authored because this practice amounts to privatizing a public education system. D.C. also fared poorly because it does not make any special provisions for at-risk students, which was an original intent of the charter movement, she said.
Charter Board Chairman Thomas Nida said he didn’t want to comment on the report because he was unable to read it Wednesday.
Public charter schools, allowed in D.C. for the past 11 years, have been soaring in popularity in the city as students have been leaving poorly performing traditional public schools in droves. In the last annual report by the Center for Education Reform, the District was deemed to have the strongest charter school law in place nationally, because organizations are given the maximum amount of freedom in opening and growing the number of charter schools.
