President's Perspective

The promise and pitfalls of charter schools

by Randi Weingarten

Apr 23, 2009 3:12 PM

That is the central debate right now in Harlem over the role of charter schools and district schools.

Sadly if you simply read the New York tabloids you’d think, “Asked and answered.” Charter schools, good; district schools, bad; and anyone who says otherwise should be silenced, jailed (or perhaps, as the New York Post has done to me, simply caricatured on a daily basis).

Like most debates about public education, the answer is far more complicated.

First the most obvious point. From the first day of my tenure as UFT president, I’ve fought for a public education system where every school is one where parents want to send their children and educators want to work. If you spent a recent Saturday in Harlem, as I did, with more than 2,000 other educators, students and their parents, as well as community leaders and elected officials, you would conclude that that vision is more of a reality today in Harlem than ever before.

No, I was not at a charter school lottery. I was at the Harlem Parade and Fair. More than 50 schools — district and charter — coming together in the village of Harlem to celebrate our children’s education, and to learn more about the neighborhood’s panoply of public school options. Too bad those eager to write the obituaries of Harlem’s public schools weren’t there to join us. It may have debunked a few myths.

My second point: Public education is not a zero sum game in which if one type of school wins, the other loses. That is what has happened in some places around New York State like Albany and Buffalo, and the communities have not been well served by it. What gets obscured is that the job of the school system, be it controlled by a board or a mayor, is to ensure that all schools are good choices, not to pit one against the other. Indeed, if a fight must be waged, it should be to turn around low-performing schools, not to let them flounder and languish.

Public education, as we saw in Harlem last Saturday, is about a village coming together, not about a competition driving it apart. And it is in this context that I would like to talk about charters and their potentially positive role.

It’s not surprising that a clear, common understanding of charter schools has yet to emerge. Perhaps the only thing that really defines charter schools is their relative freedom from many rules and regulations. And that freedom has been used in quite different ways — as an enhancement of public education through innovation and experimentation by some and as a wedge for privatization by others.

Through innovation and experimentation, some charter schools yield invaluable insights into how children learn and how educators can help them fulfill their potential. And some use their new freedom to try new approaches that fail miserably. Others merely replicate the same strategies that district schools employ, but attract vast numbers of applicants by virtue of effective marketing and public relations.

Broad generalizations about charter schools are usually misleading.

• Do they do a better job of educating children than traditional district schools? The results are mixed. Taken as a whole, the academic performance of charters is pretty much the same as the district schools, a recent national RAND study concluded.
• Are the instructors, who often do not meet traditional certification requirements, a higher quality? While unionized charters retain quality teachers, turnover among charter school educators is generally higher than district schools.
• Do the schools meet the needs of all children? Some do, but in all too many cases, students with the greatest academic need are underrepresented.

The promise of charter schools is that the best of them will show the way forward for all public schools. Unfortunately, that promise has fallen victim to ideological theories that place their faith wholly in “laissez-faire markets.” Because the future of our children is at stake, and they only get one chance at a good education, that is just not good enough.

There must be systems of accountability for student performance in charter schools just as there are for district schools, and only those charter schools providing a quality education should have their charters renewed. Charter schools must supplement, not supplant district schools, and all public schools — district and charter — must be given equitable resources and support. And charter schools must give teachers and parents real voice in important educational decisions.

The late UFT and AFT President Al Shanker introduced the idea of charter schools to American education, and his original concept of charter schools — public schools freed from bureaucratic micro-management to be educational laboratories — remains vital today. It was to fulfill the promise of charter schools that just a few years ago the UFT decided to found and run two of its own and to join with a like-minded partner, Green Dot, in a third.

You can read more about our vision of what charter schools should be in an editorial in this newspaper. Sadly, however, some see charter schools not as an educational incubator for better ways to teach our children, but solely as a way to privatize public education and eviscerate teacher voice. Like so many other simplistic “magic bullets” in education over the centuries, that view reflects a narrow and misguided understanding of schools and school communities. But in their zeal to promote that view, those ideologues have demonized the

UFT and teacher unions in general as out to destroy charter schools. Our commitment to do charter schools right, as the public schools envisioned by Shanker, is misrepresented as evidence of opposition.

Now more than ever, we need a vision of public education that has district schools and charter schools working together, side by side, to educate all. Policies that pit school against school have created a senseless war that accomplishes nothing educationally and claims students as its casualties.

It is wrong to precipitously close struggling district schools the first year they receive a D or F on a Progress Report without offering them resources and support. (In Florida’s accountability system, unlike New York’s, a low grade triggers additional funding.) And it is wrong to justify such educational neglect by creating a “survival of the fittest” struggle for space. Yet that is exactly what the Department of Education is doing to several schools in Harlem. If Chancellor Klein believes that the Progress Reports are an effective motivator, he should at least give those low-performing schools the resources and supports needed to turn themselves around. District and charter schools must all be in the same educational boat.

In the long run, no school can succeed if it does not respect its teachers and give them a voice. Some charters may do well in the short run because they take advantage of the dedication and commitment of their teachers and pay little regard to the value of stability and experience. But this is not a model that works on scale, or can be maintained for the long haul.

The UFT, and many other teacher union locals, have proven themselves more than willing to negotiate contracts aligned with the unique qualities of specific charter schools. That is change done with teachers, not to them. When a particular charter school requires a different kind of contract to realize its mission, that can be done, in a spirit of collaboration and mutual respect. That is why the teachers at KIPP AMP organized with the UFT.

Charter schools in New York City and across the nation are at a critical crossroads. The promise that Shanker and other educators found in them 20 years ago still remains largely unrealized. It is time to restore their place as public schools, within a system of public education that provides quality education to all. Teachers and teacher unions are willing partners for those in the charter school community prepared to travel down that road.