The Education Law Center is one of the nation’s leading legal organizations defending the civil rights of students.
In this important new report, it presents a critical analysis of Philadelphia’s charter sector and its indifference to the civil rights of students.
I urge you to read the report in full.
When charters take the students who are least challenging to educate, the traditional public schools are overburdened with the neediest students but stripped of the resources required to educate them. It is neither efficient nor wise to maintain two publicly funded school systems, one of which can choose its students, leaving the other with the students it doesn’t want.
Once again, we are reminded that charter schools ignore equity concerns in their pursuit of test scores, that they enroll proportionately few of the neediest students, and that they intensify segregation even in cities that are already segregated.
Here is a summary of its findings:
- As a whole, traditional charter schools in Philadelphia are failing to ensure equitable access for all students, and the district’s Charter School Performance Framework fails to provide a complete picture of this concerning reality.
- Annual compliance metrics and overall data on special education enrollment mask high levels
of segregation between district and traditional charter schools. Traditional charter schools serve proportionately high percentages of students with disabilities, such as speech and language impairments, that typically require lower-cost aids and services. However, they benefit financially from a state funding structure that allocates special education funding independent of student need, leaving district schools with fewer resources to serve children with more significant special education needs. - District schools on average serve roughly three times as many English learners as traditional charter schools, and there are high levels of language segregation across charter schools.Roughly 30% of traditional charters have no English learners at all. In addition, nearly all of the charters at or above the district average of 11% are dedicated to promoting bilingualism, suggesting the percentages at the remaining charter schools may be even further below the district average.
- Despite provisions in the Charter School Law permitting charters to target economically disadvantaged students, traditional charters, in fact, serve a population that is less economically disadvantaged than the students in district-run schools.
- Students in Philadelphia charters are more racially isolated than their district school counterparts. More than half of Philadelphia charters met our definition of “hyper-segregated,” with more than two-thirds of the students coming from a single racial group and white students comprising less than 1% of the student body. This is roughly six times the rate for district schools. Conversely, 12% of traditional charters in Philadelphia enroll over 50% white students in a single school. This is more than twice the rate of district schools (5%). iii
We know from other research that certain underserved student populations – such as students experiencing homelessness and students in foster care – are underserved by charter schools. For example, Philadelphia’s traditional charter schools serve
only one third the number of students experiencing homelessness compared with district schools.iv
Both the district’s own Charter School Performance Framework and national research point to systemic practices that contribute to these inequities. Among them are enrollment and other school-level practices that keep out or push out students with the greatest educational needs.
A charter authorizing system that focuses attention on academic and financial performance to the exclusion of equity incentivizes charters to continue to underserve students with the greatest educational needs. To improve equity, the Education Law Center recommends that the Philadelphia Board of Education do the following:
• Ensure that its evaluation of new and existing charters includes and monitors equitable access findings.
• Direct the Charter School Office to build upon the existing Charter School Performance Framework to better center issues of equity during the application and renewal processes, including collecting and reporting key data elements regarding equitable access.
• Grant the Charter School Office additional capacity to provide appropriate oversight, including serving as a recognized resource for parent complaints and reviewing each charter school’s policies and practices.
“Parent complaints” will never be addressed in a significant way by privatized education. Only a democracy of elected school boards holds the promise of representation of the communities’ interests.
You are right, Linda
Thank you for posting this article, Diane.
We know …
Christian charities GIVE $$$$$ to “HATE” groups,
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/christian-charity-gave-over-50-million-to-hate-groups-report-reveals/
I read this and literally felt sick and sad. Many HATE groups like charter schools.
These haters get to write and promote “their HATE”
Charter schools are BAD, but many who don’t know about Charters are victims of the propaganda,SIGH. So, $$$$$ talks and bs walks.
How Charter Schools are Prolonging Segregation
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/12/11/how-charter-schools-are-prolonging-segregation/
Why does NAACP oppose Charter Schools
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-23/why-does-the-naacp-oppose-charter-schools
Do magnet and charter schools exacerbate or ameliorate inequality?https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soc4.12617
Charter Schools and Inequality: National Disparities in Funding, Teacher Quality, and Student Support
Click to access EPRU-0304-19-OWI%5B1%5D.pdf
The easiest and most logical solution would be to evict the Charter Sector from Philly. (It is a market sector based on the hostile takeover model of arbitrage, not an educational idea/strategy). That’s a heavy lift legislatively since grifters are gonna grift and that’s what the charter sector is, a bunch of politician and CEO/oligarch grifters, teachers excluded for the most part. If the “business model” of eduction had any viability at all charter sector teachers would never have had to unionize since they would have what they need to produce the most value (education) possible. Obviously they don’t have it, the main deficit being that they have no valid, innovative, educational philosophies or practices to produce that “value” with. No profit in doing that, plenty of profit to be had with their self dealing shell corporation models etc. America be damned, but a few will get rich or have influence over others they (mis)educated for that purpose..
Klondike, excellent summary.
Adding, Bill Gates is the man most responsible for education oligarchy which is now focused on public universities, specifically the Gates Foundation, John Arnold, PPIC, George Miller of the Bipartisan Policy Center, etc.
“a few will get rich…” Five words which seem to fully explain right-wing policy in modern day politics across the globe.
And I should add neoliberal “left” in there before the word policy
Charter Schools and Inequality
National Disparities in Funding, Teacher Quality, and Student Support
Click to access EPRU-0304-19-OWI%5B1%5D.pdf
This comprehensive look at equity in Pennsylvania demonstrates that charters have failed to serve all students. The result is the creation of an inequitable tiered system of access and opportunity which is the result of politics in the commonwealth. Over half of Philadelphia’s students are now in charter schools. A closer look reveals inherent inequities between charter schools and public schools. Charters have failed to deliver on every measure of equity. Charters are more hyper-segregated, have a lot fewer students with disabilities, especially severe, expensive disabilities, many fewer ELLs and a far less competent staff than public schools. Charters in Pennsylvania have been draining public schools for years while cherry picking students with higher academic potential, less expensive to educate, and leaving the public schools with those that are more expensive to educate. In other words the depleted public schools serve those with the greatest needs. Many of Philadelphia’s public schools are the schools of last resort for students rejected by market based policies. Compared to district schools, traditional charters have more students with high-incidence disabilities that are less expensive to serve, but fewer students with low-incidence disabilities that typically require more expensive services. Market based education has created the system of inequity in the commonwealth today.
Now that Philadelphia is no longer under mayoral control, the city should declare a moratorium on charter expansion. The reckless policies of the past have destabilized the capacity of Pennsylvania to serve its students equitably. Charters are unnecessary and unneeded. The add little of value to educational opportunity. They enhance segregation and siphon program money into private pockets while starving the neediest students left in depleted public schools. Philadelphia should also consider having an elected school board rather than an appointed. It is the appointed boards that have put the city in its current inequitable state as a result of politics.