When I was in middle school, friends and I would play tackle football in the park. One kid chosen by the other team, Billy, was an excellent athlete. Their quarterback, Paul, often touted his play-calling skills, convincing us his strategy was why his team kept winning. Later, I realized how silly this was, as Paul would fake here, deke there — then hand the ball to Billy, who would run right by us.
Charter schools’ success is like Paul’s — they boast of their innovations and ideas, but they “win” because they cherry-pick their students.
Kate Hardiman and Tom Rogan recently ripped United Teachers of Los Angeles for its call for a moratorium on Los Angeles charter schools. They assert that charters do a better job than traditional public schools do, but their evidence of charter superiority — better test scores and graduation rates — is meaningless without context.
Gordon Lafer of the University of Oregon, who conducted an extensive study of charter schools, says: “Charters sort and subdivide the student population … While charter schools are required by law to accept any student who applies, in reality they exercise recruitment, admission, and expulsion policies that often screen out the students who would be the neediest and most expensive to serve — who then turn to district schools.”
The pursuit of a charter school is powerful evidence of a student’s and family’s commitment to education — a factor strongly correlated with academic success. Even fervent charter advocate David Osborne acknowledges “families have to choose charter schools, so kids with disengaged families are more likely to remain in district schools … this gives charters an advantage.”
I benefited from this selection effect when I moved from our high school’s residential school to its magnet. Our magnet accepts everybody, just as any public school does. Yet in our magnet, major indices for student success, such as attendance, legal status, and parents who are educated and/or speak English, are significantly higher than in the residential school. Magnet students outperform the residential students in practically all areas and are greatly over-represented on academic and athletic teams and in student government. Yet, the only thing that separates them is that our magnet students wanted to apply and the residential students didn’t.
Charters are also able to remove disruptive students far more easily than traditional schools, an advantage administrators in traditional LAUSD schools often speak of wistfully.
Hardiman alleges charters are more cost-efficient than traditional public schools, but most charters are nonunion and employ a workforce that is a cost-cutting boss’s dream: young people willing to work long hours for little pay. When the teacher can no longer afford to work for such a low wage, they have to move on or are pushed out, and a younger teacher replaces them. While this structure can be applied in a relatively small number of schools, it is obviously unsustainable as a larger model.
Charters create many financial difficulties for traditional schools, which face many fixed costs and long-term community obligations not easily scaled down when enrollment declines. Yet when a student leaves for a charter, the district loses all of the funds appropriated for that student.
In a 2016 study, the MGT consulting group estimated that the diversion of students to charter schools costs Los Angeles Unified School District $508 million a year — $4,957 for each student lost to a charter. Moreover, with enrollment down throughout Los Angeles, why add any schools, traditional or charter?
UTLA is hardly alone in recognizing that the game is rigged against California’s traditional schools. In 2016-2017, the Anaheim Union High School District’s Board of Education, the president of the Oakland school board, and the Santa Clara County Board of Education each called for slowing or stopping charter growth.
LAUSD’s traditional schools are underfunded and understaffed. During UTLA’s recent strike, we fought for what our students need — smaller class sizes, and more nurses, librarians, and counselors — while pointing to the funding problems caused by both the drain of funds from charters and underfunding from Sacramento.
The solution is not to pluck the best and most motivated students out of public schools and put them in charters. The solution is to properly fund public schools so all students are served. That is what UTLA seeks.
Glenn Sacks teaches at LAUSD’s James Monroe High School and is co-chair of United Teachers of Los Angeles at Monroe. He was recently recognized by Deputy Superintendent Vivian Ekchian for “exceptional levels of performance.”
