Do charter schools measure up?

During the 2002-03 school year, Indiana joined the rest of the country in a grand experiment to reform the education system by opening its first charter schools.

Education is one of those paradoxical issues where the vast majority of Americans agree the current system is broken, but little ever changes. Given that much of this is the result of a partisan deadlock over issues such as school vouchers and teachers unions, charter schools have steadily grown as the less controversial option.

Today some 1.2 million American pupils attend charter schools, and as of this fall, 49 charter schools were in operation across the state of Indiana. Concentrated in the urban areas of Indianapolis, Gary and Fort Wayne, but also scattered in other areas across the state, including Evansville and Lafayette, these schools were supposed to perform better than and spark innovation from their faltering peers.
However, the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) at the IU School of Education conducted a study concluding that, so far, charter schools haven’t radically shaken things up very much.

Charter schools are publicly funded and operate with a great degree of autonomy. Critics often question how accountable charter schools really are to their charters when the penalty of closing the schools is often difficult to enforce, and teachers unions are wary of lost rights under the charter system.

The CEEP study found that most of the stakeholders misunderstood some aspect of the charters, likely due to the many changes the Indiana General Assembly has made to the law since 2001.

Fortunately, this doesn’t seem to confound to fears that charter schools would somehow perform worse than their traditional counterparts.

In fact, the CEEP study found “no practical difference between student performance in charter schools and traditional public schools.” But the charter schools were supposed to perform better. Combine that with the fact that the study found a considerable lack of coordination and support among charter schools in this state and the report seems like bad news for charter school supporters.

Still, there were some good signs. The report found some innovation in charter schools and traditional public schools seem to be creating new programs in response to charter schools in their districts.

The study also found that parents are highly satisfied with the charter schools their children attended. Demand for charter schools also continues to remain high, particularly in urban areas at the elementary level.

Politically speaking, charter schools still seem like a great compromise for school reform. Even though a YouGov poll found that Americans supported vouchers 53 percent to 32 percent, vouchers have almost always lost when placed on the ballot.

Charter schools have been successful in other big cities like New York and Los Angeles. Indiana’s charter schools might simply need more time.

For that reason, the Indiana General Assembly should stick to these schools, but if in a few more years there has been little progress, they might need to re-examine the charters themselves or the whole plan altogether.