Welcome
For the next two days, the North Carolina Public Charter School Advisory Council will meet at the Education Building in Raleigh. The State Board of Education (SBE) has asked the council to discuss whether charter schools adversely impact school districts. Some suspect that the ultimate goal of the SBE is to impose an arbitrary cap on the number of charter schools and/or seats that may be established in a given county. Could we be witnessing the beginning of a major push to restore the cap on charter schools?
Bulletin Board
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CommenTerry
Under Republican leadership, the NC General Assembly eased limits on yearly enrollment growth and lifted the 100-school cap on charter schools. These bipartisan reforms were a response to the strong parental demand for charter school seats. According to an article published in Carolina Journal, officials at the state’s Office of Charter Schools reported that well over 29,000 children remained on charter wait lists last year and they expect thousands more to be added this year.
Demand began to build around a decade ago, but powerful and well-funded advocacy organizations urged Democratic leaders of the General Assembly to maintain limits on charter growth. Much to the disappointment of parents, state-imposed restrictions forced charter schools to keep tens of thousands of kids on waiting lists and discouraged many others from applying in the first place. Unfortunately, it will take several years of growth to put a dent in waiting lists statewide. Even the approval of a handful of "fast-track" charters, which will begin operation later this year, will do little to meet parental demand for charter seats.
These two factors — removal of the charter cap and pent-up parental demand — scares the bejeezus out of state education officials and school district superintendents. Earlier this year, a handful of district administrators and school boards complained that new and expanding charter schools would limit their ability to provide a sound, basic education to students remaining in the district system. In response, the State Board of Education (SBE) asked analysts from the NC Department of Public Instruction to examine decade-old regulations designed to indemnify districts that experience a significant migration of students to charters. Part of the SBE’s objective is to establish an "appropriate" limit to the number and/or percentage of students enrolled at charter schools in a given county.
It is not hard to understand why the State Board of Education is pursuing this strategy. Changes to the charter law mean that their options for trying to "cap" charter growth are limited. Consequently, they have latched onto statutory language that requires the state to consider "the impact on the local school administrative unit’s ability to provide a sound basic education to its students when determining whether to grant preliminary and final approval of the charter school." Virtually the same standard applies to applications for enrollment increases at existing charters.
There are multiple problems with this standard, but a few of them stand out. First, there is no research basis for determining when one or more charter schools begin to have an adverse impact on a school district. The state may try to establish a limit on the percentage of students that may attend a charter school in a given county, but at what point does the existence of the charter school begin to compromise the education provided by the district? There is no evidence that a district that experiences a 9 percent migration to charters is less capable of providing a quality education than one that witnesses a 5 percent shift. Simply put, considerations of charter "impact" will be arbitrary and capricious.
Second, school districts have not met the burden of proof necessary to establish that charter schools have compromised the district’s ability to provide a sound basic education. Descriptive statistics that detail student migration and/or funding loss are not sufficient. Rather, the school district must show that the introduction or expansion of one or more charter schools caused a sustained, statistically significant decline in the performance of those remaining in the district. To my knowledge, no school district has come forward with research that even comes close to meeting this minimum standard.
Finally, charter schools are public schools. (Charter haters, see Chapter 115C‑238.29E of the NC General Statutes, "A charter school that is approved by the State shall be a public school within the local school administrative unit in which it is located.") Essentially, the state will need to make the ridiculous argument that an increase in public schools is harmful to public schooling. Moreover, approving regulation that cultivates an antagonistic relationship between charters and districts renders charters incapable of fulfilling one of their primary functions — to be "laboratories of innovation" for districts.
For these reasons, I recommend that the Public Charter School Advisory Council reject any attempt to put arbitrary limits on charter growth. Further, I strongly advise members of the General Assembly to add language to the charter school statute that prohibits the State Board of Education from using its regulatory power to implement restrictions on the growth of any public school, district or charter.
Random Thought
There is no consensus pick for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the upcoming NFL Draft. Most mock drafts have the Steelers taking an offensive lineman (Cordy Glenn), a defensive lineman (Dontari Poe), or a linebacker (Dont’a Hightower) in the first round. There are obvious needs at all three positions, and I am confident that the team will address them in subsequent rounds. But I would not object to the Steelers trading the 24th pick and moving out of the first round (if the price is right). After all, I suspect a team that is desperate for a quarterback, e.g. Cleveland or Arizona, will want to move into the late first round to secure someone like Oklahoma State QB Brandon Weeden.
Facts and Stats
The NC Department of Public Instruction received 63 charter school applications for 2013-2014, but six did not meet the noon April 13 deadline or were incomplete.
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
PCSAC — The North Carolina Public Charter School Advisory Council
Quotes of the Week
"While lifting the cap on charter schools was a great first step, we must be careful that a slow moving process for approving new charter schools would act as a de facto cap. Therefore, we must address the thousands of families on waiting lists for charter schools in addition to the dozens of charter schools waiting to open. We must implement a process to ensure that parents and students are not left in limbo on their school options."
Pat McCrory, A Passion for Education: The McCrory Plan for North Carolina Schools, March 28, 2012
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