The debate over charter schools in Chicago and across the nation has increasingly become bitter and polarized. One side consists of the pro-charter advocates, who believe charters are the solution to the public education crisis - the silver bullet. As depicted in the movie Waiting for Superman, the narrative is that traditional public schools are consistently failing students in low-income neighborhoods (hence the name “drop-out factories”). Thus, charter schools provide options to families that are more successful at raising student achievement by being given greater flexibility to experiment with innovative methods of education.
The other side is decidedly anti-charter and sees the increase in charter schools as a move by reform-minded politicians to privatize education. They argue that charters take away resources from neighborhood schools; instead of investing in the schools that exist, charter schools are opened by private corporations and marketed to families as an alternative, though research shows charters do no better or worse than traditional schools in raising student achievement. And, among other criticisms, charters are accused of skimming the top students from other schools, not accepting or not being able to provide the services for students with disabilities, and counseling out kids who have behavior problems or cannot conform to the culture of the school.
Navigating through these highly charged arguments and finding common ground is difficult. It may, however, be helpful to look back to the history of the charter school movement to understand the changing definition of charter schools. We may realize that the pro or anti-charter debate actually hides a deeper concern not about the existence of charters itself but about the types of charter schools that are being opened today.
Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers from 1964 to 1985, first proposed the idea of “charter schools,” which would be publicly funded and centers of innovation. For Shanker, charters would be created by small groups of teachers or parents who submitted research-based proposals for their school plans to a panel of members from the school district and the teachers union.
In Illinois, Governer Jim Edgar signed a charter school law in 1996 that would allow the opening of 45 quality public charter schools across the state, with 15 in Chicago. Since then, the cap on the number of charter schools has been lifted once in 2003 and again in 2009. In 2004, Mayor Richard Daley and CPS CEO Arne Duncan announced the Renaissance 2010 plan, which would open 100 new charter and contract schools in Chicago. Thus far, the Renaissance School Fund (RSF) has raised over $50 million in order to open 70 new schools and create 13 charter networks. (A new fund called New Schools for Chicago was launched in 2011.)
This policy is perhaps the catalyst behind the emergence of different types of charter schools and, more recently, explains why one type has become more and more common. The three general types of charter school are (1) “independent” charter schools founded by groups of teachers, such as Polaris, Namaste, and Academy of Global Citizenship; (2) charter school “networks,” which have more than one school campus that share the same board of directors; for example, United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) schools, LEARN Charter network, and Noble Network of Charter Schools (which began as a single campus started by teachers). Some networks are managed by national Charter Management Organizations (CMOs) or Education Management Organizations (EMOs), such as Chicago International Charter Schools (CICS) and Chicago Math and Science Academy, which is managed by Concept Schools. And (3) a third group of charter schools consists of a diverse mix of those started by community organizations (Erie Elementary Charter School, partnered with Erie Neighborhood House), universities (University of Chicago Charter Schools), and local business or civic leaders.
Over the past couple of years, the trend in charter approval has been to replicate charters within networks because they can demonstrate a “proven educational model.” As Diane Ravitch points out, this is vastly different from the original intent of the charter school movement. Not only did Shanker propose that charter school should collaborate and not compete against neighborhood schools, he was also adamantly opposed to charters operated by for-profit organizations and corporations.
Ravitch writes, “In 1993, when Shanker saw that the charter idea was going to be used to privatize public education, he turned against charter schools...He became a vocal opponent of charter schools when he realized that his idea was embraced by “the education industry.” She argues for fixing the charter school movement by re-aligning with Shanker’s original concept.
In a blog post titled “What is Lost” from January 2012, Dr. Marvin Hoffman writes, “What we are losing by excluding [independent charters] from the mix of new schools is a spirit of entrepreneurship that lay at the heart of the charter school concept from the beginning. Charters were not intended to grow into miniature replicas of the larger system and to eventually replace it. They were intended to establish beachheads of innovation that could eventually reach into existing public schools to help them broaden their view of what education could look like...”As a design team of teachers, we advocate for quality, independent charter schools, who are truly innovative and thus intend to stay small instead of replicate. After all, the value of charter schools goes beyond test scores but in the possibility of closing the chasm that exists between charter and public schools in a particular community to provide opportunities for all its students.
