There are no publicly funded charter schools in Northern Virginia. The simple reason is that state law allows local boards of education to have the final say in the matter.
This quirk in the law has the practical effect of negating two of the main advantages of charter schools. First, they provide much-needed competition to traditional public school systems. Research has shown that this competition improves education for all children because the threat of losing students — and the funding that comes with them — forces traditional school systems to improve.
The second advantage of charters is that as smaller, independent schools, they can tailor their approach to the individual needs of students much better than large school systems. Without the confining constraints of a central office, they can experiment with curriculum, the length of the school day, teacher salaries and other variables to find what works.
Predictably, a proposal to open the first charter school in Fairfax County is meeting resistance. The Fairfax Leadership Academy, which would rent space at Graham Road Elementary, is aimed at high-risk, low-income students in seventh to 12th grade. The proposed year-round charter school would feature a longer school day and a rigorous college prep curriculum. Every student would take Virginia’s Standards of Learning and other standardized measures of accountability, so it would be easy to determine whether the academy is actually meeting its goals.
Opponents argue that the charter would drain the already underenrolled Falls Church High School of students and financial resources. But Eric Welch, a longtime teacher at J.E.B. Stuart High School who is heading up the charter school team, counters that it would help students who were already falling through the cracks. Welch’s team hopes to raise $250,000 in donations and qualify for a $200,000 federal startup grant.
The academy received unanimous approval from the Virginia Board of Education in April, but the Fairfax County School Board must also give it a thumbs up at its Oct. 25 meeting before organizers can start preparing for the 2013 opening. School boards nationwide have been notoriously reluctant to approve charter schools for the reasons cited above, but such objections must take a back seat to the needs of students who are at high risk of dropping out or not continuing on to college. And the law that allows local school boards to veto their competition needs to be changed.
