Today, the Network for Public Education released a new report on the astonishing rate at which charter schools close. The period covered in the report was 1999-2017, using data collected by the U.S. Department of Education. The findings were researched by Ryan Pfleger, Ph.D., and written by Carol Burris, executive director of NPE.
Contact: Carol Burris
Phone: 516 993 2141
Email: cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org
A new report shows that half of the nation’s charter schools fail during their first fifteen years. The report concludes that nearly one million students have been stranded by charters that closed.
A newly released report by the Network for Public Education (NPE) tracked the longevity of charter schools that opened during the same year in order to determine the rate and progression of charter school failure. Analyzing a database that tracks charter schools over two decades, the report documents an astounding 50% failure rate by the close of year 15.
Commenting on the report’s analysis and findings, NPE Executive Director, Carol Burris, said, “We asked education researcher Ryan Pfleger, Ph.D. to analyze the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data to determine charter school failure rates at the 3, 5, 10 and 15-year marks. We were shocked to find that even by year 5, less time than it takes for a child to complete elementary education, 27% of charter schools are gone.”
Pfleger analyzed charter schools in the United States as far back as possible given the data available. Using enrollment numbers from the final year that the charter school was open, he documented that more than 867,000 students were enrolled in charters that closed between 1999 and 2017. “If we added closures prior to 1999 and subsequent to 2017, it is likely that one million students have been displaced,” he observed.
The study also found that charter closures were most likely to occur in the poorest neighborhoods of America’s poorest cities.
Dountonia Batts, an NPE Board member, and former Indiana charter school teacher concurred with the findings of the report, “I had students whose high school experience was completed at three different schools because of closing after closing. The marketing to the broader community is that charters are better for vulnerable students, which likely eases the collective conscience of those who benefit from the voluntary re-segregation of schools by choice. The students who often feel the hurt first are in black and brown communities where the charter product is peddled as a civil rights solution.”
Commenting on the report, historian of education Diane Ravitch concluded, “The public school should be a stable institution in every community, always there for children and families. Unfortunately, as this report shows, charter schools are inherently unstable. Charters fail for a variety of reasons, mainly because they are a market mechanism, like shoe stores or restaurants. Here today, gone tomorrow.”
The report, Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures 1999-2017, and an animated map that shows the accumulation of failures across the United States can be found at https://networkforpubliceducation.org/brokenpromises.
Charter schools do not perform better than public schools, and they are notoriously unreliable as this study shows. Most do not return good value for the amount of money that is spent on them. Charter schools have a dubious track record at best, and they are known for a tremendous amount of waste and fraud. We cannot pay for parallel private schools and public schools for the same dollar. They either will cost more in taxes, or services will have to be cut for the public schools that serve the most students
. Democratic public schools represent an investment in the local community they serve while charter schools represent a disinvestment in the local community schools.. Public schools are a much better long term investment than private charters. Many thanks to NPE for collecting the data and doing the research. The public needs to know how their tax dollars are being spent and how wasteful privatization is.
It’s pretty easy to predict what the Disrupter response to this outstanding report will be:
“That’s the whole point. Choice in schooling is all about generating competitive alternatives and weeding the bad ones. It’s natural selection, survival of the fittest, only accelerated, controlled breeding and culling.”
Gee, maybe the Fordham Institute should give me a highly lucrative spot as a regular contributor!
The problem with this entirely predictable eugenics-style argument, ofc, is that the experiments with charter schools aren’t controlled. They are a freaking free-for-all, in the course of which, a lot of kids get harmed. The harm takes several forms:
There are the kids who are subjected to the horrible instruction and abuse in the failed charters.
There are the kids who have their lives upended, often several times, by the sudden closures of their schools.
There is the extreme, calamitous waste of taxpayer dollars siphoned off from public schools and poured down the black hole of these failed charters.
There is the destruction of communities and of community schooling resulting from the appearance of these toxic plants in their ecosystems.
I can hear the meretricious pundits of the Fordham Institute now: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.” We’re not talking eggs here. We’re talking about using your money, taxpayers, to break children and communities.
Privatizers never reveal any of these negatives when they are pitching their charter schools. In addition, students lose legal rights from IDEA, and they may not be receiving instruction from certified and qualified teachers. Charters are risky business, but the human toll is not a consideration.
Well said, Bob
And, as Diane notes, “Unfortunately, as this report shows, charter schools are inherently unstable.”
(The phrase “Inherently unstable” reminds me of the president.)
I’ve found throughout my career that most students come to school seeking stability in at least some form(s), often unique to each child.
The last, last, LAST thing they need is a bunch of dopes and/or miscreants who are trying to “break” them and their teachers and their schools…
The schools close, the kids are stranded, but the money stays in private pockets. It’s a recipe.
The sad fact is that lots of students shuffled into private charters are poor. Poor students already lead unstable lives. How does it make sense to send the poorest most vulnerable students into schools that are here today and gone tomorrow?
Thanks, as always, to the NPE for its excellent work.
As soon as I read the statistic about how many new charters close, and before I got to the end and read Dr Ravitch’s comment, my thought was immediately that it sounded just like the rate at which new restaurants fail. I suspect that some people thought that here was a good way to start a new “business” only to find out that it’s not so easy.
Hmm, Betsy, the Beast, like her Boss, TrumpEekThinslySkin will have to put a astop to that accurate data leak (like Trumpty Dumpty is attempting to do with the daily data on Covid-19 deaths so the Kremlin’s Agent Orange can claim no one is dying from the virus and he saved America) so no one else ever finds out how many charter schools are failing and what they are costing the taxpayers so the wealthy can keep getting wealthier and the working class poorer.
As a geography teacher, I LOVED the map! Excellent example of dot distribution map. Good legend, too.