The recent Senate elections in Georgia delivered a victory to Democrats, with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff edging out incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Beyond symbolic significance (Ossoff and Warnock will be the state’s first Jewish and African-American senators, respectively), the results from Georgia mark a sea change in the political fortunes of President-elect Joe Biden. With Democrats (narrowly) in control of the Senate, Biden will no longer have to rely on Republican votes to confirm judicial picks and cabinet members. Several of the President-elect’s nominees raise serious red flags (like abortion zealot Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services), while others seem patently unqualified, if unoffensive (like Pete Buttigieg for Transportation). Still others have largely flown under the radar, like Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, currently Connecticut’s education commissioner and a former public school administrator. He will likely be a shoo-in, not least because unlike a disconcertingly large number of Biden’s nominees, he’s fairly qualified for the position he was nominated for.
Arguably the most prominent issue in the American educational landscape today is that of school choice. On this matter, Cardona gives reason for hope. Upon becoming Connecticut education commissioner two years, he stated that “Charter schools provide choice for parents that are seeking choice, so I think it’s a viable option.” Since 2019, he has established an innocuous (if sparse) record on school choice, reauthorizing all 25 of the state’s charter schools, with none closing or opening during his year-long tenure. In contrast, Biden, once a school choice proponent, is now fiercely opposed, having vowed on the campaign trail that charter schools will be “gone” if he is elected. No doubt the teachers unions, with their deep pockets and tantalizing endorsements, are largely to blame for this. In a November 2019 video published by the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García tells Biden that charter schools are “very misguided school reforms.” She goes on to say, “You know how we feel about charter schools,” to which Biden responded, “Same way I feel.” He followed up by vowing that “No privately-funded charter school will receive a penny of federal money — none,” a shocking reversal from 2008 and 2012, when the Obama–Biden educational platform called for more charter schools.
If Biden and his fellow public school zealots represent one extreme, the other lies with public school skeptics like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate who in 2015 dismissed traditional public schools as “a dead end.” Before being tapped to join President Trump’s cabinet, the billionaire heiress devoted decades — and a chunk of her family’s fortune — to promoting the school choice cause. As the chair of the Alliance for School Choice, she spearheaded efforts to introduce charters and school vouchers in her home state of Michigan, with mixed success.
How can an issue like charter schools inspire such wildly different opinions? Are charter schools the panacea, as proponents argue, for the struggling American public education system? Or do they underperform, and drain public school budgets, as opponents claim? As it turns out, the answer is somewhere in between — and although charter schools are not perfect, they remain an invaluable option for underprivileged families in struggling school districts in cities across the country.
Part of the problem with making sweeping plaudits or condemnations of charter schools is that there are simply so many of them. America’s first charter school, City Academy, opened in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. In the nearly three decades since, their numbers have grown exponentially: the most recent federal data from 2016 records approximately 7,000 charter schools nationwide, educating three million students. In some states, charter schools are an unquestionable success. In Florida, for instance, the most recent data shows charter school students outperforming their public school counterparts on 83 percent of measures. Meanwhile, in New York, charter school students gain on average, over the course of the school year, two months more of math and one month more of English compared to public school pupils.
However, in other states, like California, Michigan, and Ohio — to name a few — charters perform about the same or worse than public schools. In these states, inadequate laws and regulations are a key part of the problem. Charter schools exercise a degree of autonomy from public regulations and oversight on the condition that they are accountable for achieving good results. If a charter school is underperforming, the government should be able to close or replace it. However, a Department of Education survey found that more than half of charter school authorizers encountered difficulty closing underperforming schools. In addition, of the twelve percent of all charter schools that have closed, more than two-thirds did so because of financial inviability, not poor performance. In other words, because oversight bodies lack the teeth to enforce high standards, charter schools generally remain open as long as they can pay the bills, regardless of whether they are achieving positive results for their students. When looking at the issue state-by-state, charter schools generally appear to be about as good as the oversight and regulation governing them; Michigan, for example, which has some of the laxest oversight laws, also has some of the worst-performing charter schools, particularly in the city of Detroit. Few states have the mechanisms in place needed to enforce quality control among charter schools – last year, only five states received scores of “mediocre” or above by an educational watchdog agency. This lack of adequate oversight is understandable when considering that charter schools are such a recent phenomenon, but still, without comprehensive, enforceable laws and regulations in place, the door remains open to incompetence, fraud, waste, and abuse.
Still, even in states where charter schools appear to underperform, there is a silver lining. In Arizona, for instance, charter schools reportedly perform slightly worse than public schools – on paper. However, a recent analysis that factored out virtual schools, juvenile detention programs, and schools serving primarily overage students or late transfers, found that charters actually had slightly higher — not lower — test scores and graduation rates. Another example is California, where on average charter schools perform about the same as public schools — except among low-income black and Latino students, for whom charter schools provided math and reading gains greatly exceeding those of local public schools, according to a Stanford University study. These distinctions were especially pronounced in urban areas, where many minority students are concentrated. Studies of charter schools in cities including Boston, Chicago, and New York have replicated these findings. What this means is that while charter schools may not always perform comparatively better in already-good suburban school districts serving predominantly white, middle-income students, they are succeeding where they are needed most: in struggling urban school districts serving low-income, largely minority student bodies.
Of course, test scores and graduation rates are not the only consideration — but charter schools are valuable for other reasons. For one, they are useful for expanding the educational footprint in resource-strapped states and school districts, as well as in areas experiencing population growth. Though charter schools receive public funding, the costs of actually starting a school — like constructing new buildings — is usually footed by the operating organization itself. Additionally, because charter schools are not required to provide the same level of transportation, food offerings, and student support services as traditional public schools, they are less expensive to operate.
An example of where these advantages have proven especially important is Arizona, whose warm climate and inexpensive housing makes it a unique draw for both retirees and young families. In the 2000s, the state was experiencing a population influx and, with a limited budget, was struggling to build and expand enough schools for its fast-growing student population. Rather than settle for overcrowding, Arizona turned to charter schools to fill in the gap. In addition to allowing for the construction of numerous new schools the state would not have otherwise been able to afford, academic performance has increased statewide. Last year, Arizona’s eighth graders demonstrated math skills that rivaled those of its ninth graders back in 2003. As its population continues to age, the United States will need to address a version of the problem faced by Arizona: with more money going towards programs like Social Security and Medicare for retirees, federal and state budgets will have increasingly less leeway to boost spending on schools. Charters will be an evermore appealing option for states that want the best of both worlds: high-quality care for their seniors, and state-of-the-art schools for their children.
Still, test scores, graduation rates, and cost analyses aside, the strongest evidence in favor of charter schools is simply how popular they are. Even with more than 300 new charter schools opening each year, over a million children and teens sit on waiting lists, hoping that a spot will open up for them. More so than with ballots, people vote with their feet — and on this issue, millions of American families have made themselves heard: they want a choice. It may seem like a radical concept — until just thirty years ago, for generations the norm was that every student attended a school chosen for him by his school district. But in reality, for those with means, that was never the only option. If an affluent family was unhappy with the public schools in their district, they have always been able to move to a community with better schools or pay tuition to send their kids to a private school. Even as today’s leading Democrats rail against school choice, they take advantage of a version of it in their own lives: Elizabeth Warren’s son attended an elite private school, while Joe Biden sent his sons to Catholic schools.
School choice has always existed – the only difference was that until thirty years ago, it was the sole privilege of middle- and upper-income families. Charter schools have leveled the playing field by providing different educational options to lower-income families who cannot afford private school tuition or housing in better school districts. Public school partisans – like Bernie Sanders, who during his primary campaign stated, “We do not need two school systems” – may argue that such choices are superfluous. If charter schools often perform little better than traditional public schools, they may ask, then what is the point of having such a choice? Such a premise assumes that test scores are the only measure of a school’s worth. In the real world, families are drawn to a school not just by its academic performance, but other factors as well. Sports, facilities, location, special courses or programs, or a spiritual/cultural atmosphere may all be important considerations. Even students hailing from excellent public school systems may elect to attend a private school for any of those reasons and more. Charter schools extend a degree of that opportunity to families of all colors, incomes, and ZIP codes. Politicians on the right and left have been arguing and pontificating on the issue of charter schools for as long as they have existed, and they likely will for years to come. But for the families of the four million children who attend — or are waiting to attend — charter schools, the question has long been settled.
In spite of the efforts of powerful teachers unions and their Democratic toadies, there are few issues less partisan and with broader general support than charter schools. A poll released last January by the American Federation for Children found overwhelming bipartisan support for school choice, with nearly 80 percent of parents in favor of the option to choose the public school their child attends. More so, the survey found that 58 percent of Democratic primary voters, 62 percent of African-Americans, and 65 percent of Latinos said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate in favor of eliminating federal funding for charter schools. If not because it is morally right, perhaps political expediency will be reason enough for Biden to return his erstwhile support to the charter school cause. If he truly wants to “united the country” as he says, getting behind school choice would be a perfect starting point. Incoming Secretary Cardona has potential, but he can only succeed on this issue if the President-elect is willing to lead.
