In response to an earlier post, reader Michael Fiorillo offers his definition of an ethical charter school. Bear in mind as you read this, that the original charter concept was that it would be a school that took on the most difficult and challenging students, like dropouts, and had the freedom to try innovative ideas, then shared those ideas with the public schools. It was not supposed to have the same population or to compete with the public school or to take the best students, but to solve problems on behalf of the public schools, employing teachers who belonged to the same union.
Fiorillo writes:
An ethical charter school is one that
– doesn’t invade and take over public school facilities.
– doesn’t cherry-pick students for admission.
– doesn’t “counsel out” students facing behavioral or academics challenges.
– replaces students who leave the school, rather than using high student attrition to manipulate their test, graduation and college-admittance statistics.
– Enrolls local children who have special needs, are English language Learners, or are homeless, at similar percentages to those found in the local community.
– negotiates wages, benefits and working conditions that reflect the prevailing standards in the public schools.
– makes efforts to retain faculty and staff, rather than churn and burn through them.
– Pays management salaries comparable to those in the public schools.
Yes, an ethical charter school does all these things.
That’s why, based on the above criteria, virtually none exist.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Worthy criteria, Michael. Unfortunately, many public schools do not currently meet all these conditions, either.
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Please elaborate.
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Presumably a reference to selective admissions schools.
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OK, but that only addresses one or two of my points.
Next…
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It seems to me that public magnet schools fail on
1. not invading and taking over traditional neighborhood public school buildings
2. not cherry picking students
3. not counseling out students
4. not replacing students that leave
5. not enrolling students with special needs
basically all the parts of you post that are about the students are likely to be violated by selective admission magnet schools.
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You persist in raising this red herring, suggesting that you face challenges in reasoning, or are trolling.
As I and others on the blog have repeatedly said, but you in your willful obtuseness ignore, magnet and specialized schools, while raising issues that need to be debated, are quite open about their restrictive admission standards.
Charter schools, on the other hand, are marketed to the public as being open to all students and as a substitute to the public schools, when that has been demonstrated to overwhelmingly not be the case.
If you indeed are a teacher, as you claim, I fear for/pity your students. They deserve better.
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Charter schools are marketed as a wide variety of schools. I was under the impression that the folks on this blog condemned all charter schools, no matter their approach to education. In fact you say there are virtually no ethical charter schools. Are you supportive of agricultural charter schools, Montessori charter schools, Waldorf charter schools, charter schools aimed at students with learning disabilities, charter schools with language immersion programs, any charter school that offers something not available in traditional zoned public schools? If so, you have needlessly alienated a large group of charter parents who send their students to those schools. If not, the interesting question is why your practices 1-5 are unethical for charter schools but ethical for magnet schools?
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There’s the theory and then there is the reality. When I first heard about charter schools I was excited. The idea of a school where the teachers and principal had a say on the programming, free of the regulations from “downtown” and state administrators seemed ideal. It never happened.
A few charter schools meet the stated criteria, which is reasonable, but the majority are so flawed that they need to be disbanded. And being flawed does not refer to the teaching going on in the building.
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It is hard to find up to date statistics, but the most recent I could find at the National Center for Education Statistics reports that in 2011 there were 5,274 charter schools (out of a total of 98,817 public schools). When you say the majority (something well over 2,600 schools by now i guess) are so flawed that they need to be disbanded, what is the basis of this claim?
My numbers are from this table: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/pesschools10/tables/table_02.asp
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Teaching economist,
I have no data, just my personal experiences and what I have read here and in other places. I’m sure there are some phenomenal charter schools, but even the best ones often take away from the public schools. So part of the flaw is in the inequity of the system. I personally don’t think the assessments should be used to evaluate either sort of school, though the segregation found in the Buffalo charter schools not only affect the scores, they are also one of the flaws in the system.
Remember, I was part of a committee which helped set up a charter school – an experiment in working with inner city students. It was a small school in an old gutted church and quite innovative and the population was from the poorest sections of Buffalo. The upshot was that it expanded and thus destroyed the nearby public school which originally sponsored the program. Ultimately it became a competing neighborhood school. I no longer see the innovations which made the program unique.
So I just report what I see. I am open to new ideas.
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It seems to me there is a big wide world out there, with charters in Newton, Kansas,New York City, New York, and everywhere in between. There are also huge differences in regulatory requirements across states. The charter school in my town, for example, is chartered by the local school board. Surely that charter can not be criticized for taking resources away from the local public school.
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You are right teaching economist. My viewpoint is based on narrow data and I admit I could be totally in the wrong, but from other’s comments, I think my viewpoints have some validity.
And if the local charter school supported by the school district decides to break away and become independent, then all that money, training, and support for a specialized program is for naught, the program is no longer a part of the public schools. It’s all a game of opening and closing schools in search of results which are nebulous.
And I know there are numerous exceptions.
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You are on a blog where heterodox posters are typically hounded into leaving, so I would not take the comments here as generally representative of the range of charter schools.
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TE – I’ve been caught before. Your comment is noted. As I said, I keep an open mind.
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I’m sure there are ALOT more charter schools in the 2013-14 school year. It will probably be almost impossible to access current data.
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According to charter sources, there are now more than 6,000 charters.
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Some number over 6,000 seems reasonable as an estimate today. Somewhere between 6 and 7 percent of all public schools.
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TE, charter schools have said repeatedly in federal courts, state courts, and to the NLRB. That they are private corporations with a government contract, like Boeing. They are not public schools, not subject to same laws. They say so, I believe them.
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If you have problems with the NCES categorization, you should take it up with the NCES. My figures for the number of charter schools comes from Table 2: Number of operating public elementary and secondary schools, by school type, charter, magnet, Title I, and Title I schoolwide status, and state or jurisdiction: School year 2010–11. I am simply using the NCES language.
Don’t you mean some charter schools have gone to court making an argument about jurisdiction? Was Walton Rural Center Charter School a party to these lawsuits?
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And TE, if they are not public schools, why are they using public money? Again, the flaw is that they are draining the life our of the public school system (sometimes even when they are technically part of the public schools). Some of the same innovations could have been funded by individual states via public schools by relaxing their rigid rules for a trial basis. At least as far as NYS is concerned.
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I think charter schools are public schools.
I think the fundamental problem with allowing traditional public schools to differentiate themselves from each other is the zoned admission system. A school can not be too different from the one in the next catchment area over or too many parents will want to jump the catchment line.
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WOW. And the number continues to grow.
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The most interesting part of Michael Fiorillo’s post was his objection to charter schools that are substitutes for local schools. I think the most interesting aspect of charter schools is that they can be an alternative, offering something different than traditional zoned school education. If the orthodox poster on this blog has no objection to Montessori Charters, Waldorf Charters, progressive charters, STEM charters, I think there is room for dialog and improved regulation of charter schools.
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If that could be achieved I would be very happy. The original purpose of charters was an exemplary idea.
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I think it could happen if folks were willing to draw reasonable distinctions between different charter schools and different local situations.
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I think it could happen if for profit organizations were regulated or banned, if there was a separate funding line, and if only innovative charters were approved, not the same old, same old already in existence on the next block (As exists in Buffalo, NY).
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You might look into the work Joe Nathan is involved with in Minneapolis St. Paul. He posted here on occasion, but may finally have been driven off.
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It would appear that you actually described the unions version of a dream school rather than a charter school
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I would add this:
–offers something unique in terms of programming or approach that sets it apart from available public schools.
If a charter is simply duplicating public school offerings in every way (except, of course, who takes in the money), then there is no reason for it to exist in the first place.
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Well, Peter, charters do offer programs and approaches that (fortunately) are not usually found in public schools. I refer to the behaviorist, boot camp for the “worthy poor” approach of charter chains such as KIPP, Success Academies and Uncommon Schools (former home of NYS Education Commissioner John King).
Luckily, the overwhelming majority of public school students are not forced to withstand the robotic, authoritarian (and arguably racist) methods employed by these sweatshops for teachers and students.
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I mention it because SB 1085 in PA, a charter reform bill that’s still alive in PA, would remove the requirement that charters offer some program that would distinguish them from public schools. Under the new rule, a charter could open a regular old school that competed directly with a public school and not even pretend to be doing anything special.
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I will nominate Walton Rural Center Charter School as one that would pass all the tests above. Perhaps others will nominate other schools.
I am unclear about how these criteria apply to schools that are meant to serve special populations like those with autism or the deaf. I would hope that they would not be seen as being unethical because they pick their students and do not have the similar percentages of students with learning disabilities as the local neighborhood schools.
There are, of course, many public magnet schools that would fail these tests, at least the ones concerning student make up. I noticed, for example, that the public magnet high school poster TC mentions (https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/11/what-is-an-ethical-charter-school/comment-page-1/#comment-1095439) does not normally admit students after the freshman year.
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I’ll have to agree with you that a little nuanced thinking is worth a trip down the road. Certainly the ultimate in education is not to homogenize every classroom with every socio, economic, and skill level by age. That would require a lot of transportation, which I’m against as a practical matter. But even if that wasn’t the case, letting people segregate by skill level, or style of teaching, Waldorf, Montesori, boot camp style, might be a good thing. Hey, it’s a free world. How to keep a level playing field for resources is an important issue.
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I think the Icahn chain of charters may fulfill some of these qualities; they have their own buildings (mostly); cap class sizes at 18 in grades K-8, and have low student & teacher attrition. They are not perfect and I don’t think they enroll = numbers of ELLs and special needs students but given their low class sizes they have will minimize the need for special services in many cases.
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leoniehaimson: thank you for helping put more nuance in this thread.
😎
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An excellent analysis Michael. It is both shocking and deeply revealing how rarely we even hear of the ethical dimension of anything these days, even our schools, so internalized has the savagery of neo liberalism become in this land.
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I think this is a laudable list however, I believe there are other ethical reasons for a charter school to exist. There is one school in Raleigh that was created for students with heavy extracurricular loads in sports or performing arts. It requires a minimum # of hours of out of school instruction for enrollment so the students are probably what you would call “cherry picked” but it serves a specific purpose. There are no specials so the students are done by 1:30 every day to allow them to finish homework before going to practice. They have 16 students/grade and the teachers have been there for years. The board is very open and available and their finances are published every year. The test scores, which I know isn’t a great measure of success of a school but it’s the data we have available to us, are >95% every year in every grade and subject and turnover is nearly non-existent. We’ve tried to get our daughter in there unsuccessfully for the past 2 years and may try again next year.
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In NYC, I’m pretty sure there was (is?) a public school that catered to kids involved in the theater industry that worked much in this way – there was (is?) City As School where kids spent much of their days at companies. Going way back, when I was in high school, we had an internship program where the kids loaded up on their required courses in the morning and then left early to go on their internships
These were all either regular public schools or programs in regular public schools — no charters needed in these cases.
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I can see how it may work as a regular public high school in NYC. The school to which I was referring is K-8 and schools work a bit differently in NC. Schools are assigned almost randomly and can switch every year depending on who is in charge of the redistricting that year. There is little to no public transportation and school bus rides can take up to an hour and a half so parents have to drive kids around. If you are lucky you can find someone with whom you can car pool but that always has it’s pitfalls. Wake Co does have an early college program but students have to apply to that as well, similar to a magnet. Given the population and the way schools are assigned down here, there is really no other way to make this kind of program available to the kids who need it other than a charter. I’m not a fan of the for profit charters. One is opening up in our town and I went to their open house. I came away feeling dirty for even having gone to it. They were everything people hate about charters and I was pretty much disgusted by them. There is a completely different feeling surrounding the school I originally posted about. It was run by parents, not a corporation. It was in an old warehouse for years until the families raised enough money to build the modest but very well equipped building they are in currently. They aren’t a drag on the public school system because they have such low numbers and they aren’t out to make anyone rich. They have a specific purpose which is to educate athletes and artists in an efficient manner so the students have time to focus on both academics and their outside activities.
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Yep, you’re talking about LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts. I remember in my H.S.we had DECA and City As School also. We had lots of choices.
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I wonder, shouldn’t charters actually take in MORE students with disabilities and/or in poverty? They receive more per pupil funding, their classes are smaller, their are usually a smaller ratio of students to teachers, they have the clout of billionaires if things get tough, etc. They really have so many advantages. Wouldn’t an ethical charter operator recognize that and take in more then their fair share for students in need? That is, if they got into education to help…
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The original idea for charter schools was admirable. The implementation of this idea has been high jacked and twisted into an entirely different beast.
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I definitely do not support charter schools–I worked at one for 6 years, and the last 2 years were pretty horrific–however, I DO think high stakes testing plays a huge role in why there are so few “ethical” charter schools. In many places, charter schools are held to even higher standards than their neighboring public schools in terms of standardized tests. Schools that start off with an admirable vision do not measure up to the test scores they are expected to receive to be considered “successful.” They risk closure and loss of funding from charitable organizations (such as The Robin Hood Foundation) that base their decision to donate to charters on test scores. They basically devolve into the model that we now associate with charter schools in an effort to stay afloat. The emphasis placed on high stakes testing has created another market for those looking to privatize and profit from a public service.
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Of course, Megan, because the tests are weapons, and can be used against charter schools – especially independent, mom-and-pop charters – just as easily as public schools. Just keep in mind that the people driving the standards and tests are the same ones funding charter schools, and the schools themselves are just pawns in their strategy.
The entire regime of so-called education reform collapses without high stakes exams, which are the lynchpin of school privatization. Aside from being profit centers in themselves, they are the vehicle for standardizing instruction, scapegoating teachers and closing schools. That’s why nothing scares these people like parent rebellions against the tests.
Part of the model of so-called education reform is one of constant throughput, or churn-and-burn. This is behind all the B-School rhetoric about seeking “disruptive innovation” in the schools: it provides ever-more growth opportunities for edu-preneurs to profit off the skim generated by their intrusions.
Churn and burn teachers, churn and burn schools, churn and burn communities, it’s all a vehicle for dominance, capital accumulation and monetizing kids.
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Perfectly put!
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beautiful, Michael!
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Few people write, let alone, think, as purely, truthfully, and effectively as Michael Fiorillo . . . . . .
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“Pays management salaries comparable to those in the public schools.”
Hmmm, let’s put this to the “education reform” angel/devil test…data-driven, natcherly…
From a previous post by me.
😏
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/05/florida-a-charter-founder-who-has-raised-200-million-in-tax-exempt-bonds/
[start excerpt]
At last count, Eva M makes $485,000 @year for 6700 students in 20 schools = $485,000 ÷ 6700 = $72.39@student [rounded off to the nearest penny].
Carmen F makes $212,000 @year as the School Chancellor of 1,100,000 students in hundreds of schools = $212,000 ÷ 1,100,000 = $0.19@student [rounded off to the nearest penny]
Eva M makes 381 times @student compared to Carmen F @student.
[end excerpt]
As “Doctor” Steve Perry says, “Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.” [channeling rapper Jay-Z] [this from “America’s Most Trusted Educator” — ya gotta believe it, in big letters on his website!]
While I have adhered to that oh-so-outdated passé math of yesteryear up to this point, let me conclude with a conclusion worthy of Whole Brainiac Champion charterite/privatizer math—Cage Busting Achievement Gap Crushing Conclusion here I come!
Eva Moskowitz, Carmen Fariña, angel, devil, devil, angel—it’s Saint Eva by a halo and a half over that devil of a public school advocate Carmen!
As for another conclusion—most especially any that would put Eva M and charters in an unfavorable light—I can only repeat the immortal words of Michelle Rhee:
“I reject that mind-set.”
💀
So obvious, dontcha think?
😎
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Seems like a reasonable and responsible set of criteria. Implies that charters have exploited the original concept to create refuges.
But, even so, it begs the question of whether there should be refuges from public schools even for parents who can’t afford private education.
Of the three charters with which I am familiar I’d rate one an A (selective admissions), one a C+ (less selective), and one an E(not very selective=low, low performing students, but ones whose families wanted them out of the public schools).
But none of those private-like schools are doing the job envisioned by Michael.
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Harlan, I’m with you. Why should my tax dollars go to support charters which are, in essence, private schools?
The Buffalo news came out with a report last week which discovered that, after years of attempting to integrate the Buffalo Public Schools, the majority of schools were just as segregated as they were in 1972. And the worst offenders – the charter schools, many which were 99 to 100% African American. And the main reason (despite the fact that only 20% of Buffalo’s population is white, and most of them live in South Buffalo) is that the charter schools are neighborhood schools and parents want their kids close by while integration requires busing to locations cross town.
In essence, the charter movement, at least in Buffalo, is back to segregation. Those charter schools in South Buffalo have a majority of white students. Again, that’s the neighborhood.
Your tax dollars at work.
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Probably you’re right, that ideally, public tax money should not be funding “private like” schools. Some parents, however, feel they should have the same educational options as more wealthy families, and are willing to see their personal local charters funded by tax dollars, regardless of its effects on the rest of the system.
The old rule used to be that you could have whatever your daddy could pay for, but these days, parents have come to feel they are entitled to an education that they can’t pay for, and so accept taxpayer subsidies.
It would, in my view, be best if every family had enough disposable income to be able to afford private school tuition if they chose to do so. But at present the economy is growing so slowly that that objective isn’t working. I blame the Obama administration for that—no Keystone pipeline, stimulus that doesn’t stimulate, all kinds of environmental regulations that are not germane to clean air and clean water, the ACA which is holding down hiring and repressing business and therefore job growth, and a host of other deliberate policies to buy votes with taxpayer money.
So next to those economic and political enormities, which strike at the heart of American values, parents who with requisite sacrifice COULD pay private school tuition, and who accept tax payer subsidies to indulge their middle class ambitions for their kids seem to me to be a minor problem.
Irritating, I’ll grant you, but no where near the immorality of everything the President is doing. And if he could get away with it, he’d try to shut down the charters too, as he tried to do in Washington, D.C. while he runs his kids through one of the best schools in the nation.
Of course, HE can pay for it, given that our taxpayer dollars funds all his vacations and his fund raising trips and his wife’s beautiful clothes.
Livin’ high off the hog, while the poor people endure.
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Harlan, I agree with your first two paragraphs. I’m not going to get into a political debate on Obama’s policies except to say I am horrified at the direction public education is heading. I will respect your viewpoints and reserve my own judgement for the moment. (Please don’t freak out when I tell you I am going to Louisville, Kentucky to hear Hillery Clinton speak on women’s issues in a couple of weeks).
I disagree that everybody deserves the right to afford a private education, (although I would have loved to have had the $40,000+ a year to send my son to the Gow School when he floundered in our local high school). Instead, I would prefer to give our children a quality public education program emulating the best qualities of those private schools. And there is no reason that this could not be accomplished, if we were focusing on the right aspects of education (definitely not on invalid assessments). Unfortunately, we are heading down the wrong road and I fear there is no room for a uturn.
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Seems to me that Michael’s charter school criteria would be best realized in a public school system.
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I would say that several of his points require uniformity across schools to work very well. For example, no cherry picking suggests that no school seek out students who want a paticular approach to education (least the process of applying be seen as cherry picking or there is a possibility that the paticular approach to education does not work for that student and they are counseled out).
Each grade or perhaps semester must be self contained if there can be no restrictions on students comming into the school. Programs like the aerospace magnet high school in Seattle, where the classes build on each other from one year to the next, would of necessity violate that condition of the post. Classes at different schools must resemble Lego blocks so they will always fit into each other’s programs.
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I don’t know maybe I’m an idealist but students coming into a new school and having to play catchup is nothing new. I doubt the aerospace magnet high school in Seattle, where the classes build on each other from one year to the next is much different from American Tech high schools that were popular choices up until the 1980s.
It just seems like we’re reinventing the wheel a lot.
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At some point playing catchup becomes a barrier to enrolling in the school. When would it violate the norm of ethical behavior suggested here?
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I have not seen that point reached, to be honest. And I’m including in that statement incidences of kids coming back to school after 16 months of chemo and the children of missionaries reintegrating back into English-speaking American schools after 2+ years abroad.
Good teachers are trained to deal with catch-up situations, and no sometimes it isn’t easy but I have not seen a curriculum catch-up failure or a breech of ethics as such.
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I was thinking more about specialized courses of study that extend over multiple years. Perhaps the lack of specialization does help in the situations where students are away from US K-12 education.
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Actually I was speaking about those specialization courses too. In my experience many students take a break (going to live with Mom for a while, a semester on AFS foreign exchange, kidney transplant etc.) and come back to resume where they left off without much skip.
I have seen a lot of curricula interruptus with stressed-out children in the middle of nasty divorces, refugee children (Bosnian & Sudanese where I live) and kids from very large families who often get lost in the shuffle at home and suffer from from a lack of individual attention and not enough calories. I believe these young people need the help of a social worker – not a school closure & replacement with competitive 9-hour a day charter school.
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If public schools exist which provide the good aspects of the ideal charter school, why not just use the public school system and do more of the same. Why do we need to develop a whole new institution which ultimately competes with what already exists (sometimes developed by individuals who don’t have a clue about education or running a school – this comment, too, is based on my experiences).
And I don’t buy the argument that competition will make the “schools” try harder to achieve results.
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@Ellen T Rock
Yes I totally agree. No need to reinvent the wheel here.
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