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Case III: Charter Schools in Washington, D.C. (3 February) Yale University Political Science Department PLSC240 Spring 2009 John Bryan Starr

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Page 1: Yale - 2009 Fall - Readings - Public Schools Policy -  Case III Washington

Case III: Charter Schools in Washington, D.C.

(3 February)

Yale University Political Science Department

PLSC240 Spring 2009

John Bryan Starr

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Case III: Charter schools in Washington, D.C.

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Table of Contents

The case

3

Document #1: Education Commission of the States, “Education Issues: Charter Schools” (http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/search/default.asp)

4

Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools

7

Document #2: Karla Scoon Reid, “Minority Parents Quietly Embrace School Choice,” Education Week, December 5, 2001

11

Exhibit #2: Charter school enrollment of selected populations

19

Document #3: Brian C. Hassel, The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).

20

Exhibit #3: “Strong” and “Weak” Charter Laws

35

Document #4: Bruno V. Manno, “Yellow Flag,” Education Next (Winter 2003)

37

Document #5: Frederick M. Hess, “The Political Challenge of Charter School Regulation,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 85, No. 6, March 2004, pp. 508-512.

44

Exhibit #4: Charter School Enrollment and Closures, by State

52

Document #6: Caroline Hendrie, “Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on Closings,” Education Week, February 2, 2005

53

Document #7: Ron Zimmer and Richard Buddin, Getting Inside the Black Box: Examining How the Operation of Charter Schools Affect Performance (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, October 2005)

57

Document #8: Darcia Harris Bowman, “Charter school openings lowest in six years,” Education Week, February 18, 2004.

81

Document #9: Diana Jean Schemo, “Charter schools trail in results, U.S. data reveals,” New York Times, August 17, 2004.

83

Document #10: “Charter vs. non-charter performance,” Education Week, September 1, 2004.

87

Document #11: Diana Jean Schemo, “Education Secretary defends charter schools,” New York Times, August 18, 2004.

87

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Document #12: Diana Jean Schemo, “A second report shows charter school students not performing as well as other students,” New York Times, December 16, 2004.

88

Document #13: Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein, The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2005)

91

Document #14: Erik W. Robelen, “NAEP Gap Continuing for Charters: Sector’s Scores Lag in Three Out of Four Main Categories,” Education Week, May 21, 2008.

96

Background information on Washington, D.C. and its public schools

99

Exhibit #5: School system statistics

105

Exhibit #6: Washington, D.C. School Governance

106

Exhibit #7: Student performance

107

Exhibit #8: Timeline of events in Washington, D.C.

108

Document #15: Robert Allen Blair, “‘To Fix a Broken City:’ Home Rule and the Origins of School Choice in Washington, D.C.,” Unpublished senior thesis, Education Department, Brown University, April 2006. Chapter 1: “The Charter Schools Movement in D.C. 1995-96.”

109

Document #16: Melissa Schoeplein, “Washington D.C.: The Charter School Revolution In the Wake of a Congressional Takeover,” Unpublished paper for ED164, December, 2001

125

Document #17: DC Appleseed Center, Charter schools in the District of Columbia: Improving systems for accountability, autonomy, and competition (Washington, DC: DC Appleseed Center, 2001)

134

Document #18: Mark Schneider (SUNY Stony Brook) and Jack Buckley (Boston College), “Making the Grade: Comparing DC Charter Schools to Other DC Public Schools,”1 Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25:2 (Summer 2003)

142

Epilogue

161

1 The work reported in this article was begun with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and has continuing support from the National Science Foundation. Thanks to Dann Millimet for suggestions regarding the propensity score model.

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Document #19: Alex Hemmer, “The Pride of His City? Adrian Fenty and Mayoral Leadership in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools,” Unpublished paper for PLSC260, “Public Schools, Politics and Policy,” Yale University, December 2007.

161

Suggested Study Group Questions

172

Appendix #1: DC Charter Legislation 173

Appendix #2: Last year’s clarifying questions

173

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The case.

This week’s case is our second foray into the world of school choice. Here again, the market argument in favor of charters is that of providing choices for parents with students in failing schools. We saw several variations of the argument in favor of choice last week: (1) “Public” schools are not public. Parents should have the same choice among “public” schools as they do among “public” buses. (2) Markets are preferable to government monopolies in education just as is the case in the economy. (3) The education bureaucracy is bloated and adversely affects the quality of education. (4) Some children are trapped in underperforming schools and should be given the opportunity to escape.

We will also hear a non-market argument in favor of charter schools. Charters can serve as laboratories for innovative practices, operating free of the encumbrances dogging ordinary public schools. Indeed, public schools can learn from the successes experienced in charter schools.

As of 2007, 4,000 charter schools were operating in 40 states and enrolling over a million students, or 2.1% of public school students nationwide.

We will use Washington, D.C. as our case study exploring charter schools. The city has 71 charter schools that enroll upwards of 33% of its student population. Its situation is complicated by the fact that the charter regulation was enacted at a time when Congress had stepped in to take control of the city and, subsequently, its school system.

We begin with an introduction to charter schools from the Web site of the Education Commission of the States, and follow that introduction with some public opinion polling data on charters. An article from Education Week suggests that poor parents of color are looking more favorably on charter schools than they once did.

The politics of charter schools is introduced with a chapter from a Brookings Institution study published in 1999. An excerpt from a second chapter from the same study looks at the question of how charter schools are to be held accountable. There follows an article outlining the sources of opposition to the charter movement and its strengths.

The casebook continues with five articles dealing with current issues in the charter movement: the decline in the pace of opening new charter schools, and the controversy over student performance results in charter schools that erupted with the publication of an American Federation of Teachers study in the summer of 2004.

The Washington case is introduced by a senior thesis and a research paper from two Brown University students. These descriptions of the introduction of charter schools in the District of Columbia is followed by the executive summaries from two evaluation studies of the performance of Washington’s charter schools.

The casebook concludes with an epilogue describing the efforts of the recently-elected mayor, Adrian Fenty, to follow the examples of Richard Daley in Chicago and Michael

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Bloomberg in New York City in establishing a system of mayoral control in the District of Columbia Public Schools.

• • • We begin with a general description of charter schools from the Education Commission of the States. Document #1: Education Commission of the States, “Education Issues: Charter Schools” (http://www.ecs.org/ecsmain.asp?page=/search/default.asp) (Consulted 14 August 2008)

Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools, founded by educators, parents, community groups or private organizations that operate under a written contract with a state, district or other entity. This contract, or charter, details how the school will be organized and managed, what students will be taught and expected to achieve, and how success will be measured. Many charter schools enjoy freedom from rules and regulations affecting other public schools, as long as they continue to meet the terms of their charters. Charter schools can be closed for failing to satisfy these terms.

As of November 2004, 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had enacted charter school legislation. As of September, 2006 there were about 4,000 charter schools serving over 1.1 million students across the country. Charter school laws often vary from state to state, and often differ on several important factors, including who is allowed to sponsor charter schools, how much money charter schools receive for operational and facilities expenses and whether the teachers in a charter school have to be certified.

Several recent studies have examined the impact of charter schools on students, schools and school districts. While it is difficult to draw any definitive conclusions on the impact of charter schools, these studies shed light on who is attending charter schools, how charter schools operate and how school districts are reacting to, and interacting with, charter schools. As the charter school movement matures, the relationship between charter schools and student achievement will receive heightened scrutiny, and what is learned will significantly impact the future of the movement.

Quick Facts: As of August 2008, about 4,000 charter schools are open in the United States. The states with the most charter schools are California (618), Arizona (464), Florida (356), Michigan (229), and Texas (207). There is only one charter school in Mississippi. (Source: http://www.uscharterschools.org ).2

2 Cf. The ECS State Policies for Charter Schools Database (http://www.ecs.org/html/educationIssues/CharterSchools/CHDB_intro.asp) . This database contains information about the state policies for charter schools in each state. From this database, you can generate profiles of the state policies for charter schools in individual states, create comparisons of specific types of state policies for charter schools across several states and view predetermined reports on state policies for charter schools.

At the present time, 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have enacted charter school laws, so this database only contains information for them. It does not contain any information for the 10 states that have not enacted charter school laws.

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Frequently Asked Questions:

What is a charter school? Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools that operate under contract with a state, school district or other governing entity. This contract—or charter—stipulates how the school will be organized and managed and how student success will be measured. In exchange for deregulation, which frees charter schools from following many of the requirements faced by traditional public schools, a higher level of student accountability is expected from a charter school, and institutions can be closed if expectations are not met. Do students who attend charter schools achieve higher test scores? There is conflicting data regarding this question. A recent study in Arizona found that charter school students showed stronger gains on reading tests than their counterparts in public schools. However, another recent study in Michigan found that charter school students actually performed below traditional school students on statewide exams. Until more data can be synthesized, the issue of charter school impact on student performance will remain debatable. Do charter schools provide increased accountability for student performance? According to recent studies, charter schools’ claims of greater accountability for student performance are only partially accurate. One group of researchers points to an “accountability bind” faced by charter school authorizers in several states, in which performance is difficult to define or measure, leading to confusion in many places. Charter schools are also difficult to close once students, parents and teachers become invested in and attached to a particular school. Many of these problems stem from growing pains, as legislators and educators attempt to chart unknown territory in the charter school movement. What is the impact of charter schools on traditional schools and school districts? Some district leaders complain about lost revenue and budget problems caused by students transferring from district to charter schools. Others report that charter schools force traditional schools to adopt a “customer service” approach to education delivery in their districts. A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education finds that most school districts across the country instituted new education programs or changed the education structures in their schools to either replicate or compete with charter schools.3

This database contains information about the state policies for charter schools in each state. From this database, you can generate profiles of the state policies for charter schools in individual states, create comparisons of specific types of state policies for charter schools across several states and view predetermined reports on state policies for charter schools. 3 Erickson, John, and Silverman, Debra, Challenge and opportunity: The impact of charter schools on school districts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 2001)

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Positive or negative, charter schools are often changing the way traditional school districts manage their education systems.

Pros and Cons: According to proponents:

• Charter schools present students and parents with an increasingly diverse array of education options.

• The competition provided by charter schools forces school districts to improve the performance of their schools in order to attract and retain students and dollars.

• If managed properly, charter schools serve as laboratories for education experimentation and innovation. The easing of certain regulations can free teachers and administrators to develop and implement new learning strategies.

• Increased accountability for charter schools means that schools have to perform or risk closure. This extra incentive demands results, showing increased student achievement.

According to opponents:

• Because charter schools operate as a business, as well as a learning institution, they are subject to market forces that may eventually force them to close, depriving students of a continuous education.

• Charter schools sometimes segregate students along racial and class lines and fail to adequately serve students with disabilities or limited English proficiency.

• Accountability for student performance is difficult to measure and enforce in the burgeoning charter school movement. The usual complications of accurate student measurement are compounded by the often-conflicting demands of the state government’s need for accountability and the marketplace’s desire for opportunity.

• The emergence of education management organizations as proprietors of charter schools creates new, “pseudo-school districts” in which decisions are made far removed from the school.

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Polling data suggests that the public finds charter schools to be a more benign and appealing form of school choice. Exhibit #1: Public Opinion Polling Data on Charter Schools 1. Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, “The 39th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools,” September 2007 4 (http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kpollpdf.htm ) (Consulted 14 August 2008) Charter Schools Charter schools may be out of place in this section on alternatives, since they are actually public schools. However, we include them here because they operate outside the normal public school structure. Table 20 provides the data regarding the public’s view of these schools. The percentage that favors charter schools has climbed steadily since the question first appeared in the poll. The 60% in favor of charter schools I up 7% from 2006 and up 18% since 2000.

Table 20. As you may know, charter schools operate under a charter or contract that frees them from many of the state regulations imposed on public schools and permits them to operate independently. Do you favor or oppose the idea of charter schools?

National Totals No Children In School (%)

Public School Parents (%)

2007 2005 2000 2007 2005 2000 2007 2005 2000

Favor 60 49 42 58 49 42 63 48 40

Oppose 35 41 47 36 40 47 34 43 47

Don’t Know 5 10 11 6 11 11 3 9 13

2. Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson, and Anthony Foleno, On Thin Ice: How Advocates and Opponents Could Misread the Public’s Views on Vouchers and Charter Schools (New York: Public Agenda: 2000) (Excerpt of findings) Most Americans know very little about vouchers, charter schools or for-profit schools, and most have a limited grasp of the essentials of the expert debate. Experts and advocates may hold carefully thought-out positions, but the public has barely begun to learn how these

4 The 2003 and 2004 Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup polls did not include questions on charter schools.

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proposals might work. Even parents in areas with school choice policies in place are surprisingly unaware of the pros and cons of this debate…There can be no more striking contrast of the state of the public’s thinking about alternatives to the traditional public school system than to compare it with public attitudes toward welfare reform. In 1996, when Public Agenda conducted a study on welfare reform, Americans were far more likely to have spent time thinking about this issue. Bringing up the issue in focus groups opened the floodgates, and people leaped into the discussion. With welfare, people also had strongly held notions about what should be done: work and time limits coupled with education and child care. With vouchers and charters, little is certain and virtually everything negotiable. How much do you know about charter schools?5 Percentage saying they know “very little” or “nothing”:

General public 81 Parents 79 Charter communities 52

Do you need to learn more about charter schools before you can have an opinion, or do you know enough already?

Percentage saying they need to learn more:

General public 89 Parents 89 Charter communities 68 Community leaders 54

The public knows even less about charter schools than about vouchers, but the more people learn, the more they like the idea. Most appreciate typical charter school features such as less regulation, special themes or educational approaches, and community involvement. This appreciation stems in part from the public’s dissatisfaction with the bureaucracy they associate with traditional public schools. In the focus groups, people tended to assume that charter schools are “boutique” schools — small, specialized and similar to good private schools, but free of charge. Out of the many topics discussed with focus group participants, the charter school idea was the most difficult to get across. A typical discussion of charter schools began with general confusion over the difference between a charter school, a public school and a private school. Once participants became engaged with the idea, charter schools for the most part were lauded as innovative and energetic, liberated from the burden of regulation. There was surprisingly little wariness about deregulation, provided that charter schools are held accountable in some way for student performance. A remark by a satisfied father of two charter school students sums up this feeling: “The charter school gave us a

5 Survey data from June, 1999. All figures are %.

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feeling like we’re taking control back. We’re giving our money to the government, and they’re doing this mess. This is our way of saying, ‘You can’t have our money like that anymore, we’re gonna do it our way.’” However, since many parents are still not sure what a charter school is, it’s likely that many would like to see one for themselves before making a decision; only 8% would “definitely” send their child to a charter school. Charter schools are public schools that have a lot more control over their own budget, staff and curriculum, and are free from many existing regulations. In general, do you favor or oppose this idea?

Strongly/somewhat

favor Strongly/somewhat

oppose General public 68 18 Community leaders 77 15

Charter schools are free from a lot of the regulations and day-to-day supervision that regular public schools face. Which do you think is more likely to happen?

Teachers and principals will concentrate on teaching instead of paperwork.

54

Charter schools will be more likely to experience mismanagement or fraud.

28

When charter schools are started by groups of teachers or parents, which do you think is more likely to happen?

More schools will be started by motivated people who will do a good job.

51

Too many people who don’t know what they’re doing will open schools.

35

Would you approve or disapprove of these aspects of charter schools?

Approve Disapprove More control over hiring and firing employees, including teachers

71 19

Can be started by groups of teachers or parents in a local area.

59

28

Often focus on a special theme, such as science or art.

56 33

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If charter schools were started in your local area, do you think they would be an overall success, an overall failure, or would they not make much difference as far as the quality of education kids received?

Overall success

40

They would not make much difference 27

Overall failure

10

It depends/I don’t know

24

3. Greater Washington Community Research, Inc., Charter schools in the District of Columbia: What residents know about them and how they feel about them (March 2001) (Telephone interview with 601 Washington residents)

District of Columbia Charter Schools Polling Data

%

1. Have heard about charters

80

2. Can name a charter school

15

3. Misconceptions:

a. Partly private, partly public 54

b. Can exclude applicants 55

c. Set own standards 54

d. Charge tuition 37

e. Choose students other than by lottery 90

4. Positive aspects of charters:

a. Smaller class size 64

b. Flexibility in teaching 68

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c. Variety in curriculum 49

d. Able to meet individual student needs 55

5. Effect on public schools:

a. Threaten 28

b. Strengthen 36

c. Neither threaten nor strengthen 36

Those with kids in school are better informed about charters than those without, but misconceptions exist in both groups.

African-Americans are more likely to know somebody with kids in a charter and are slightly more favorably inclined toward charters.

Information and socioeconomic status co-vary, but misconceptions are equally distributed across socioeconomic groups.

Although initially skeptical of school choice—perhaps viewing it as part and parcel of a right-wing anti-public school agenda—minority parents began to warm to the idea.

Document #2: Karla Scoon Reid, “Minority Parents Quietly Embrace School Choice,” Education Week, December 5, 2001

The critics of vouchers and other free-market-style approaches to education should be able to rally African-Americans and Latinos against the movement for alternatives to traditional public schooling.

After all, the most typical advocates of wide-open school choice are conservative Republicans and libertarians; the staunchest opponents tend to be Democratic and liberal, and can usually count on blacks and Hispanics as political allies.

But in cities where tuition vouchers, charter schools, and large-scale private scholarships are available, such options have proved popular and are quietly attracting more minority parents. People of color are now emerging as vocal and visible leaders in the school choice movement, and parents are increasingly listening to their messages.

School choice, its advocates say, can no longer be dismissed as a white, conservative movement that takes advantage of unwitting minority families.

“It’s easy to make the complaint if all of the folks leading the school choice movement are white, and all of the complainants are black,” said T. Willard Fair, the president of the Urban League of Greater Miami, which operates a charter school. “Now, you’ve got

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people on the other side who are credible, who are legitimate, who have a history of being concerned, and have no economic or political interest that is obvious.”

Proponents of school choice have yet to sway large numbers of parents of any racial or ethnic background into their camp. About 90 percent of America’s students attend public schools. Polls and surveys on school choice often yield conflicting results. And voters in California and Michigan soundly defeated voucher initiatives last year.

Yet there’s a strong undercurrent of support for alternatives from African-Americans and Latinos who have gravitated toward school choice—from charter schools, which are considered a less radical step, to publicly financed vouchers that pay for tuition at private schools. Many minority parents are impatient at what they see as the plodding pace of school reform; they’re concerned that their own children won’t benefit from long-term improvements to the current public school system.

Some national education-watchers believe that minority parents’ growing interest in school choice demands greater attention.

“This new movement from communities of color and low-income parents is certainly a threat to leaders in public education,” said Warren S. Simmons, the executive director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in Providence, R.I. “If these parents opt out, who is the constituency in these urban areas?”

Signs of ‘Restlessness’

In Dayton, a total of 6,000 students are expected to be enrolled in charter schools in that southwestern Ohio city by next fall. About 1,000 more Milwaukee students are using state-financed vouchers to attend private schools this year, bringing the total number of students using vouchers to 10,700. The private, New York City-based Children’s Scholarship Fund received 1.25 million applicants for 40,000 scholarships to attend private schools in 1999. What do those numbers mean? “It’s a sign of the restlessness with the state of play in public schools,” acknowledged Hugh B. Price, the president of the New York City-based National Urban League and an opponent of publicly financed vouchers for private schooling. “I understand the restlessness of people.” That sign has yet to be addressed by the leadership of civil rights organizations, politicians, and teachers’ unions, argues Terry M. Moe, the author of Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public. “Their own constituents—poor people and minorities—are the ones in the worst schools and the biggest supporters of school choice,” Mr. Moe asserted, citing his research that found that high percentages of African-Americans, Hispanics, and low-income people backed vouchers. “Under normal circumstances, they would support their constituents.”

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Mr. Moe added that the teachers’ unions, whose interests are rooted in the current system, seem to be the key obstacle to advancing the dialogue about school choice in political and civil rights organizations. But John H. Jackson, the national education director for the Baltimore, Md.-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said its members want high-quality education in their neighborhoods, not an unstable “corporate movement,” as he calls the push for choice. Bob Chase, the president of the National Education Association, also disputed Mr. Moe’s contention. He pointed to the overwhelming support the union received from minority voters in its successful efforts last year to defeat the voucher proposals on the statewide ballots in California and Michigan. “We’re not out of touch,” Mr. Chase declared. “According to the votes, we’re not out of touch. Those are the facts.” While Mr. Moe conceded that the unions were unlikely to change their positions on vouchers, he said that in the case of civil rights groups, older leaders would be replaced by a younger generation more supportive of such options. In fact, new organizations have emerged during the past year to take up the charge for minority parents who support a wide range of choices in education. The Black Alliance for Educational Options, which reports a membership of 1,000 people and 23 chapters across the country, was founded in Milwaukee last year to push for school choice and public school improvement. Kaleem Caire, the president of BAEO, which is now located in Washington, said that his organization’s base is growing while the NAACP’s base is aging. BAEO launched a national advertising campaign this year promoting the benefits of vouchers and charter schools.6 “If black folks sit on the sidelines of the school reform effort,” Mr. Caire said, “we’re going to be left behind again.” Similarly, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options, which was formed this year, hopes to help Hispanics gain access to vouchers, charter schools, and magnet schools to improve students’ academic achievement. Robert B. Aguirre, who is a board member of the San Antonio Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation, which provides privately financed vouchers for children living in that city, founded the Hispanic council. The new organization must also be concerned about the quality of public education, he said, since most Hispanic children attend public schools.

6 See also “Black Alliance Weighs in With Pro-Voucher Campaign,” Education Week, May 30, 2001.

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Still, Mr. Aguirre, a local businessman, added that the focus of the Hispanic council is clear: “We’re not concerned about the system. We’re concerned about the kids.” Charter School Push As such groups add a new voice to school choice advocacy, some civil rights organizations and community leaders are helping to establish charter schools for minority students. Some school choice advocates say this trend shows that they are warming to education alternatives. For example, several local affiliates of the National Urban League operate charter schools. NEA affiliates, with support from the national organization, run a handful of charter schools, which are independently operated public schools. The Washington-based National Council of La Raza, which advocates on behalf of Hispanics, has raised $10 million to create and support 50 charter schools nationwide that will be aimed at Latinos.7 And the ASPIRA Association, a national organization based in Washington devoted to the education and leadership development of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos, has five charter schools and plans to open more. “We’re definitely not abandoning our work with traditional public schools,” said Ariana Quiñones, the education director for La Raza. “But we do think that sometimes you do need an option that is more readily available.”

‘Leaving Door Open’

Johnny Villamil-Casanova, the executive vice president of ASPIRA, said his organization has worked for 35 years trying to improve public schools by providing students with mentors and tutors and by training parents to run for school board seats. He described running charter schools as a natural extension of that effort, not a departure. But while support for charter schools in such quarters is growing, most of the groups involved are wary about government-financed vouchers, at least for now. Mr. Price of the Urban League opposes the use of public money for private schooling because of what he sees as a lack of accountability. Although La Raza is opposed to vouchers in their current form because they often do not cover the entire cost of tuition, Ms. Quiñones characterized the group’s voucher position as “leaving the door open for discussion.” ASPIRA has no official position on vouchers. The emergence of the national black and Hispanic organizations pressing for school choice—and now the National Council of La Raza’s charter school effort—show the development of a school choice movement independent of the established minority leadership, said Howard L. Fuller. He is a former superintendent of the Milwaukee public

7 See also “Hispanic Group Quietly Initiates Big Charter Push,” Education Week, Nov. 21, 2001.

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schools and one of the first prominent African-American proponents of vouchers and charter schools. “The ‘leadership’ is saying one thing, but under that, there’s a movement of people coming to a different opinion,” according to Mr. Fuller, the president of BAEO’s board of directors. “Over time, it reaches the leadership.” Yet school choice proponents who attempt to show the diversity of the movement often cite the same names of African-American supporters: Mr. Fuller, Mr. Fair of the Urban League in Miami, and Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat and Pennsylvania state representative. “It’s absolutely a select few” African-Americans, said Michael Watson, a vice president of Children First America, a Bentonville, Ark.-based organization that offers private school scholarships to needy students nationwide. “But there’s a crack in the door and that crack is going to widen,” he said. “You’ve got the minority community beginning to emerge on this issue.” Both Jeanne Allen, the president of the Center for Education Reform, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that supports school choice, and Mr. Fuller said they see a change in the minority community based on reactions at their own speaking engagements. Ten years ago, Ms. Allen said, she was booed at a National Council of La Raza event. Now, people at least listen to Ms. Allen and Mr. Fuller at such gatherings. What Ms. Allen describes as the myth that a “bunch of white, public-education-hating people with horns” are pushing school choice is finally being exposed, she said. “Little by little, they’re introduced to people who don’t have horns,” she added. Mixed Messages Recent public-opinion surveys about charter schools and vouchers yield varying results, making it difficult to determine with precision the prevailing mood about school choice among minorities. A 1999 survey of 1,200 adults by Public Agenda, a New York City-based, nonprofit opinion- research group, found that 68 percent of African-Americans and 65 percent of Hispanics “strongly favor” or “somewhat favor” government-financed vouchers. A National School Boards Association-sponsored survey of about 1,211 adults this past May found that 41 percent of the African-Americans polled “strongly oppose” vouchers, while 19 percent “strongly favor” them. The National Urban League’s “State of Black America Survey for 2001” found that 58 percent of the 800 black adults polled said that education tax dollars should be used solely

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for public schools. But 52 percent of the respondents favored the creation of charter schools. Generation Gap Meanwhile, a generation gap seems to be emerging among African-Americans when it comes to opinions about school choice. A poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank that focuses on black issues, found that about 57 percent of the African-Americans surveyed supported vouchers, compared with 49 percent of all of those surveyed of any race. For African-Americans under age 35, however, the proportion approving of vouchers climbed to 75 percent. The center did not survey Hispanics. “It’s not like black parents or Hispanic parents have some philosophical preference for alternative types of education settings,” said David A. Bositis, a senior political analyst for the center. “It’s rather how satisfied they are with local public schools.” Older African-Americans are more pro-government and suspicious of the conservatives who back school choice, Mr. Bositis pointed out. Mr. Jackson of the NAACP said the younger African-American generation did not grow up in a time when black people couldn’t eat at certain restaurants because of their race and were barred in many states from attending public schools with whites. “We need to link with our historical past to change the institutions,” he said, rather than forsake the public system. Less Committed? While agreeing that the struggles of previous generations should be honored, some stress that the social landscape is different today. African-American parents in their late 20s and early 30s are simply seeking the best education possible for their children, said Vernard T. Gant, the director of urban school services for the Association of Christian Schools International, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based group representing 3,800 religious schools. Younger blacks are less committed to institutions and systems, he said, which is why they often are more accepting of educational options outside the public schools. Mr. Gant, who formerly ran private schools in Birmingham, Ala., noted that there is a history of black families sending their children to private schools. His mother, for example, sent Mr. Gant and his four brothers to a Lutheran school in Mobile until the family could afford to move to the suburbs and attend public schools there.

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But in some quarters, if African-Americans don’t see school choice through “the lenses of the past,” said Mr. Fair of the Urban League in Miami, others in the community believe they have “sold out.” Blacks who are receptive to school choice may be silenced and ostracized, he said, and meanwhile have no options for their children. “There has been a paradigm shift, emotionally and psychologically,” Mr. Fair said of the sentiment in favor of school choice. “We can’t afford to play around.” Impatient With Waiting Most parents have been waiting patiently for better schools in their communities, but to no avail, Mr. Simmons of the Annenberg Institute said. Individual schools have achieved innovation and success, he said, yet “we’re not creating communities of successful schools.” “Most people are unwilling to sacrifice their children to support their ideology,” Mr. Simmons warned. It is that impatience that has driven more African-Americans and Hispanics to view school choice as a way to improve their children’s educational opportunities, many observers say. While there must be a multipronged approach to improving education, Ms. Quiñones of La Raza said, “some communities’ needs are so great, parents aren’t willing to wait.” But Mr. Jackson of the NAACP countered that parents must wait for education reform, especially in the absence of proven alternatives. Rather than support vouchers, the NAACP launched a national campaign last month that will work to end racial inequities in public schools, colleges, and universities. In a related effort, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators last week announced legislative strategies to target the achievement gap between minority students and their white classmates. And Shirley Igo, the president of the National PTA, cautioned that parents must ensure that exercising choice “doesn’t negatively impact on the 90 percent of children in public schools.” That may be a difficult responsibility for parents to fulfill in some communities, such as the nation’s capital, which has seen tremendous growth in charter school enrollment. “I think the schools in D.C. are in such horrendous shape I could never begrudge a parent for trying to make the right decision for their child,” said Peggy Cooper Cafritz, the president of the District of Columbia school board. While she believes Washington’s schools will improve, that will only happen if the community supports public schools, she said.

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“We absolutely have an overarching duty to support public education, but I don’t think it’s just an African-American thing or a Jewish thing,” Ms. Cafritz said. “Every single group has benefited from it. As a nation, we cannot splinter that commitment.” For some African-Americans, as urban districts struggle to reach their children, charter schools and vouchers are “in the meantime” solutions, said Imani Bazzell, a parent coordinator with African-Americans for Accountability in Education, a community group in Champaign, Ill. Those who are disillusioned with public education, she said, often decide that they will create their own schools. “But I’m real nervous about the bedfellows,” Ms. Bazzell, the mother of three public school children, said, alluding to the political conservatives and corporate leaders who support school choice. “What I really want is for black folks to take the public schools back and not leave the public schools.”

The Choice Challenge Striking a precarious balance between providing parents with viable education alternatives while continuing to support a struggling school system consumes the Rev. Vanessa Oliver Ward. Ms. Ward and her husband, the Rev. Daryl Ward, lead the Omega Baptist Church, one of the largest African-American churches in Dayton. Three years ago, the church “adopted” a public elementary school, where members of the congregation volunteer their time as tutors and mentors. The church also ran an after-school program for students. Then, last year, Ms. Ward helped open a charter school for middle school students, although the church membership favored starting a private religious elementary school. Currently, 150 students, including one of her children, attend the school, which is housed in the church. Her other children attend a private school. Ms. Ward admitted that opening the Omega School of Excellence has been a “major challenge” because many of the church’s 4,000 members are public school employees. The tension was palpable in the city as the district’s enrollment decreased by about 4,700 children since 1996, and charter schools attracted more students, she said. Still, the 19-year-old church’s young congregation was willing to try something new. While Ms. Ward is the charter school’s director, her congregation continues to play a visible role in the school district. This fall, an Omega Baptist Church member was part of a slate of successful “reform-minded” candidates that was elected to Dayton’s school board. “We felt such urgency that we had to address the issue of our children not being educated,” Ms. Ward said about starting the charter school. “We have to find a solution. But at the same time, you have to support the public school district.”

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Exhibit #2: Charter school enrollment of selected populations

Source: Center for Education Reform (http://www.edreform.com/_upload/cer_charter_survey.pdf

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In the following chapter from his book, The Charter School Challenge, Brian Hassel discusses the great variety among charter school laws across the states and the effect that “weak” and “strong” charter laws has on the proliferation and operation of charter schools. Document #3: Brian C. Hassel, The Charter School Challenge: Avoiding the Pitfalls, Fulfilling the Promise (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999). Chapter 2: A Bird’s-Eye View of Charter School Politics Despite some common threads, charter school laws across the country differ from one another so greatly that they appear to have been cut from different fabrics altogether. One set of laws, termed “strong laws” or “live laws” by charter school proponents, empowers a wide variety of groups to start charter schools; allows these groups to petition some entity other than the local school board to obtain charter status; gives charter schools wide latitude in their curriculums, teaching practices, and operations; and authorizes the creation of a large number of the new institutions.8 Another set, known as “weak” or “dead” laws, restricts the range of groups eligible to propose charter schools, often to existing public schools; grants local school boards veto power over charter schools in their jurisdictions; allows only minimal independence and latitude; or strictly limits the number of charter schools that may open.9 In addition to these variations, of course, 16 states had not enacted any sort of charter legislation, weak or strong, by the end of 1998. The bird’s-eye view of charter school politics provided in this chapter looks at what political variables distinguish charter states from noncharter states and weak states from strong ones. This analysis uncovers a few interesting patterns and challenges at least one piece of conventional wisdom about charter school politics. Variations in Charter School Laws As of January 1996, only 20 states had charter school laws on the books (see Table 2-1). Though states have continued to adopt laws (and will probably do so for the next few years), this analysis focuses on the relatively early adopters of charter school laws. As more and more states adopt charter laws, fewer characteristics will differentiate charter states from non-charter states.

8 Louann A. Bierlein, “Existing Charter School Laws: Analysis of ‘Stronger’ Components,” mimeograph, 1995; Louann A. Bierlein, Charter Schools: Initial Findings (Denver: Education Commission of the States, 1996); Ted Kolderie, The Charter Idea: Update and Prospects, Fall ‘95, Public Services Redesign Project (St. Paul, Minn.: Center for Policy Studies, 1995). 9 This book uses the terms “strong” and “weak” to distinguish different types of charter laws. This terminology, of course, reflects the perspective of charter school advocates. Opponents of charter schools do not regard “strong” laws as strong at all. Because of the prevalence of these terms, however, the strong-weak distinction provides the most straightforward way to differentiate the types of laws.

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To differentiate strong from weak statutes, this analysis focuses on five characteristics of charter school laws that seem most important to the ultimate success of charter school programs and that set state laws apart from one another.10 First, did the charter law empower some public body other than local school boards to authorize charter schools? The strongest laws enabled several different entities to approve charter schools, helping to lower barriers to entry. The weakest laws allowed only the local school board to approve charters, a restriction that likely limits the potential for innovation and significant competition. Second, did the law allow a wide range of individuals and groups to propose charter schools? The strongest laws invited almost any citizen or organization, with the exception of religious organizations, to make proposals. The weakest laws allowed only existing public schools to apply for conversion to charter status. Third, did the charter law grant charter schools significant legal and fiscal independence from local school districts? The strongest laws established charter schools as legally separate entities and provided funds directly to charter schools. The weakest laws made charter schools legally and fiscally part of existing school districts. Fourth, did the charter law exempt charter schools automatically from a wide range of public school laws and regulations? The strongest laws did so; the weakest allowed exemptions in only a few cases or required charter schools to ask for exemptions on a case-by-case basis. Finally, did the law make it possible for a large number of charter schools to open? The strongest placed no limits (or high limits) on the number of schools and provided charter schools with enough resources to make them financially viable. The weakest strictly limited the number of charter schools or provided the schools with inadequate resources. These five characteristics appear most important to the success of the charter school idea and distinguished state charter school laws from one another. Without this second criterion, a sixth feature would surely be added to this list: the extent to which charter school laws held charter schools accountable for producing acceptable academic results. No charter school law could be regarded as strong unless it included provisions to ensure that only successful charter schools survive, provisions that are as essential to the charter idea as those regarding autonomy. But state charter school laws as enacted showed very little variation on this issue. Some required the students in charter schools to take state tests; others did not. Charter laws specified somewhat different procedures for revoking and renewing charters. But on the core issues of accountability—limiting the terms of charters, stating the grounds upon which charters can be revoked, and laying out the essential criteria for removal—charter laws looked very similar.

10 For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Bryan Hassel, “The Charter School Idea: Elements of an Effective Charter School Program,” Taubman Center Working Paper Series (John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1995). For other analyses of state laws that include more than the initial 20 statutes, see Angela Dale and David DeSchryver, eds., The Charter School Workbook Your Roadmap to the Charter School Movement (Washington: Center for Education Reform, 1997), chap. 2; RPP International, A National Study of Charter Schools: Second-Year Report (Washington: U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1998), pp. 13-25.

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The exceptions were the laws in Arizona and Michigan that allowed charter terms of 10 to 15 years; in most other charter states the term was three to six years.11 This distinction, however, does not warrant the inclusion of accountability provisions in an analysis of how the first 20 state laws differ, for two reasons. First, though two of these laws allowed longer charters, they each required a review every five to seven years. As a practical matter, low-performing charter schools in all states were at equal risk of having their charters revoked. Second, those two jurisdictions would be regarded as having strong laws even if they were weak on this one dimension. The analysis that follows would not turn out any differently if accountability provisions were included in the list of features worth considering. Table 2-1 shows how each state law addressed the five issues. Although each law can fall somewhere on a continuum from strong to weak, the table classifies each state as either strong or weak on each dimension. One state—Arizona—possessed all five attributes of strong laws. Six others possessed four of the five. These seven were unquestionably at

the “strong” end of the continuum. Three states—Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado—possessed three strong characteristics each. This analysis considers them strong, however, because they had what many observers regard as the most essential characteristic of strong laws: the availability of an authorizer other than the local school board.12 On the weak side of the line were ten states with two or fewer strong characteristics. Two of these states—New Mexico and Rhode Island—empowered some entity other than the

11 In Texas, the duration of the charter is not specified in the charter law; each charter contract sets out its own duration. 12 Bierlein, “Existing Charter School Laws”; Kolderie, The Charter Idea.

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local school board to authorize charter schools. But the absence of any other strong provisions renders these laws weak.13 Political Factors What political factors lead some states to adopt weaker charter school laws than others? Presumably, the extent of compromise depends upon the legislative balance between proponents and opponents of the proposed reform. The stronger the opponents, the more compromised a reform is likely to be after churning through the legislative process. Among the potential indicators of power in state policymaking in general and education policymaking in particular are partisan balance, the power of teachers’ organizations, objective educational conditions, and political culture. Partisan Balance States have increasingly become partisan battlegrounds.14 Although parties have long battled for control of state policymaking, the number of states in which one party was more or less assured of control has declined since the 1970s.15 One aspect of partisan control is the balance of power in state legislatures, which are often regarded as the central players in education policymaking.16 But the literature on state policymaking in general, and on education policymaking in particular, also points to the importance of the governor. As they have gained the power to stay in office longer, to initiate budgets, to veto legislation, and to hire larger staffs, governors have become much more effective in policymaking, especially as policy innovators.17 Perhaps nowhere has their heightened profile been more evident than in the education arena, where since the 1980s governors have played a larger role in framing and resolving policy debates.18 In popular discussions of the politics of charter schools, the reform is widely regarded as “bipartisan.” appealing to both Republicans and Democrats.19 Republicans may see charter schools as an imperfect but still promising step on the road to their desired system of school governance, in which public dollars follow students to the schools they choose,

13 [For a ranking of all states’ charter laws on a “strong” to “weak” continuum, see Exhibit #2 below.] 14 John F. Bibby and Thomas M. Holbrook, “Parties and Elections,” in Virginia Gray and Herbert Jacob, eds.. Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 6th ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996), pp. 105-6. 15 Austin Ranney, “Parties in State Politics,” in Herbert Jacob and Kenneth Vines, eds., Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis, 3d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976); Thomas R. Dye, “Party and Policy in the States,” Journal of Politics, vol. 46 (November 1984), pp.1097-1116. 16 Catherine Marshall, Douglas Mitchell, and Frederick Wirt, Culture and Education Policy in the American States (New York: Falmer, 1989). 17 Larry Sabato, Goodbye to Good-Time Charlie: The American Governorship Transformed (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1978); Thad Beyle, “Being Governor,” in Carl E. Van Horn, ed., The State of the States, 3d ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996); Thad Beyle, “Governors: The Middlemen and Women in Our Political System” in Gray and Jacob, Politics in the American States, Thad Beyle, “The Governor as Innovator in the Federal System,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism, vol. 18 (Summer 1988), pp. 131-52. 18 Margaret E. Goertz, “State Education Policy in the 1990’s,” in Carl E. Van Horn, ed., The State of the States, 3d ed. (Washington: CQ Press, 1996). 19 Kolderie, The Charter Idea; Chris Pipho, “Bipartisan Charter Schools,” Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 75 (October 1993), pp. 102-3.

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public or private. By contrast, Democrats may regard charter schools as a way to encourage experimentation and limit family choice, perhaps staving off calls for more radical “market” reforms in the process. If this bipartisan story is right, one would not expect differences in the balance of party power to distinguish charter from noncharter states. But although both Democrats and Republicans may support charter legislation of some kind, Republicans are more likely to favor strong charter laws. Strong charter laws more closely resemble the broader school choice that Republicans tend to favor.20 Power of Teachers’ Organizations Beyond the partisan balance in state legislatures and governors’ mansions, one might also examine the power of relevant interest groups in state politics, which have become more and more important state-level actors.21 Of course, interest groups exert power in part through their influence on the partisan balance, so this variable is not wholly separable from the previous one. But interest groups also wield power through lobbying and other political campaigns. Historically, state-level battles over education pitted “schoolmen,” proponents of expanding funding for universal public education, against elements opposed to such expansion. It was these broad-based coalitions interested in expanding the “pie,” rather than more narrowly focused interest groups intent on getting bigger “slices,” that defined state-level education politics.22 Increasingly, though, observers have noted the progressive fragmentation of interest groups, though they still mobilize for collective action in times of crisis.23 A great deal of this attention has focused on educators’ unions, which have much more influence in state politics than they used to. Contrast the remark of Bailey and others, who argued in the early 1960s that unions had little influence at the state level except as witnesses in legislative hearings, with Thomas and Hrebenar’s 1996 analysis of

20 This broad-brush characterisation of partisan positions, of course, masks significant differences within the parties. Within the Democratic Party, moderate elements associated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) have been early advocates for strong legislation. The DLC, in fact, published one of the first charter school manifestos, Ted Kolderie’s Beyond Choice to New Public Schools: Withdrawing the Exclusive Franchise in Public Education (Washington: Progressive Policy Institute, 1990). Within the Republican Party, certain conservative factions have opposed charter schools. Market true-believers have argued that charter schools do not go far enough toward the system of choice and competition they favor; religious fundamentalists and some back-to-basics advocates also worry that charter school programs will foster exactly the sort of educational experimentation they despise. 21 Clive S. Thomas and Ronald J. Hrebenar, “Interest Groups in the States,” in Gray and Jacob, Politics in the American States, pp. 122-58. 22 Stephen K. Bailey, Richard T. Frost, Paul E. Marsh, and Robert C. Wood, Schoolmen and Politics: A Study of State Aid to Education in New England (Syracuse University Press, 1962). 23 Fragmentation: Laurence Iannacone. State Politics of Education (New York: Center for Applied Research in Education, 1967); Roald F. Campbell and Tim L. Mazzoni Jr., State Policy Making for the Public Schools: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Making for the Public Schools in Twelve States and a Treatment of State Governance Models (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1976); Joel Spring, Conflict of Interests (New York: Longman, 1988); Frederick M. Wirt and Michael W. Kirst, Schools in Conflict, 2d ed. (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1989), chaps. 4 and 5. Collective action: Jane H. Karper and William Lowe Boyd, “Interest Groups and the Changing Environment of State Educational Policymaking: Developments in Pennsylvania,” Educational Administration Quarterly, vol. 24 (February 1988), pp. 21-54; Michael W. Kirst and Stephen A. Somers, “California Educational Interest Groups: Collective Action as a Logical Response to Proposition 13” Education and Urban Society, vol. 13 (February 1981), pp. 235-56.

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state-level interest-group activity. This survey of political knowledgeables found that the schoolteachers’ union was ranked “most effective” in 43 of the 50 states. Only business groups ranked “most effective” in anywhere near as many states (36). No other group earned this rating in more than 26 states.24 In many places, teachers’ unions have led the fight against charter school laws; in others, they have pressed for the passage of weak state laws.25 Charter schools run against union positions in several respects. First, the schools generally are not bound by local union contracts. Second, they are often exempt from laws unions have fought hard to institute, especially laws concerning the certification requirements for educators and the employment rights of teachers. With teachers’ unions nationwide mobilizing to block charter school laws altogether, or to render them weak, one would certainly expect states with strong teachers’ organizations to have no charter school laws, or to have weak ones. Objective Educational Conditions Another set of factors that might affect the balance of power of charter school proponents and opponents is the objective condition of public education in a state. One possibility is that in low-performing states advocates of charter schools and strong charter laws may find it advantageous to point out the existing system’s dismal results. At the same time, because high-performing states are generally more reform-minded, they are more likely to consider and enact “cutting-edge” reforms such as charter school laws. To attain high levels of achievement in the past, high-performing states have had to seek out and enact innovative legislation to spur improvement. Thus their very openness to new ideas makes high-performing states more likely than low-performing states to consider, and ultimately pass, charter school legislation. Political Culture Finally, students of policymaking frequently suggest that states differ in their political “cultures” and that these differences produce different policies. Daniel Elazar devised a typology of state political cultures that divides states into three categories: traditionalistic, moralistic, and individualistic.26 Individualistic cultures tend to emphasize the marketplace, favoring a limited role of government. Moralistic cultures stress “the commonwealth,” fostering a more active role for the government in advancing the public good. In traditionalistic cultures, government is controlled by a relatively small elite and acts primarily to maintain existing hierarchies.

24 See Bailey, Frost, March, and Wood, Schoolmen and Politics; Thomas and Hrebenar, “Interest Groups in the States,” pp. 122-58. 25 See American Federation of Teachers, Charter School Laws: Do They Measure Up? (Washington, 1996), which cites Rhode Island’s law as a model charter statute. 26 Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, 3d ed. (Harper and Row, 1984). Among the applications of these categories to education policymaking are: Catherine Marshall, Douglas Mitchell, and Frederick Wirt, Culture and Education Policy in the American States (New York: Falmer, 1989); Susan H. Fuhrman, “State Politics and Education Reform,” in Jane Hannaway and Robert Crowson, eds., The Politics of Reforming School Administration: The 1988 Yearbook of the Politics of Education Association (New York: Falmer, 1989).

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It is difficult to see how this broad category scheme could help predict outcomes on a particular policy question such as charter schools. Would one expect charter laws to emerge mostly in individualistic states, since the programs invoke various market-oriented ideas such as school-based entrepreneurialism and customer choice? Or would moralistic states be more likely to seize on the charter strategy as a way for state government to use its power to promote local school improvement? Perhaps all that one could safely predict is that states with traditionalistic cultures would shy away from charter laws altogether, and from strong charter laws in particular, in light of their disinclination to experiment with system-challenging reforms. Perhaps a more promising line of cultural inquiry is the literature on the “innovativeness” of states, which posits that some states are more inclined than others to be on the cutting edge of reform.27 Typically, leaders in innovation tend to be the most “developed” states, with high per capita incomes and levels of urbanization. Perhaps the differential adoption of charter schools simply reflects states’ different propensities to innovate. Higher-income urban states may be more inclined to adopt charter school legislation, and strong legislation, for other reasons as well. For example, wealth and urbanness may be important underpinnings of the potential supply of school operators charter school programs demand. The wealthier states with large urban populations may place a higher value on education in general and thus be more eager to seek out methods of improvement. Urban schools, in addition, are often the most visible examples of the shortcomings of current arrangements; it may be that the case for change is more easily made in states with large urban populations. For many reasons, then, we might expect states with high incomes and large urban populations to be earlier adopters of charter laws, and of strong charter laws. Analysis To what extent are these “bird’s-eye” political variables related to the outcomes of charter school politics in the 50 states? Partisan Balance First, consider party control of state legislatures. This analysis divides states into two categories: “high-GOP” (those in which Republicans controlled both houses in half or more of the years between 1991 and 1995) and “low-GOP” (those in which Republicans controlled both houses in less than half of the relevant years). But over which years should one calculate these proportions? This study examines the years 1991 (the year the first charter school law passed) through 1995. Some states, of course, passed no charter law. For these states, the relevant years are the whole period: 1991-95. For states that passed charter laws, the relevant years are all the years from 1991 to the year in which the law passed. For example, for a state that passed a charter law in 1993, the relevant years are 1991 through 1993. Table 2-2 shows the percentages of high- and low-GOP states that adopted charter laws of some kind: 66.7 percent of states with high levels of Republican control had passed

27 Jack L. Walker Jr., “The Diffusion of Innovations among the American States,” American Political Science Review, vol. 63 (September 1969), pp. 880-99; Virginia Gray, “Innovations in the States: A Diffusion Study,” American Political Science Review, vol. 67 (December 1973), pp. 1174-85.

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charter laws by January 1996; only 35 percent of states with low levels of GOP control had done so. And 44.4 percent of high-GOP and only 15 percent of low-GOP states had passed strong laws. These patterns suggest that high-GOP legislatures were substantially more likely to pass early and strong charter school laws.28 Table 2-2 contains the same sort of information for a different political variable: partisan control of the governorship. States are again divided into two categories: “high GOP” (those in which Republicans occupied the governor’s office in half or more of the relevant years) and “low GOP” (those in which they did not). States with high levels of GOP control of governorships were only slightly more likely to pass charter laws (42.1 percent and 38.7 percent), an insignificant difference. By contrast, Republicans governors were relatively successful at passing strong charter laws: 36.8 percent of states with high levels of GOP control passed strong laws compared with only 9.7 percent of low-GOP states, a highly significant difference. In fact, eight of the ten strong statutes were signed into law by Republican governors; seven of the ten weak laws by Democratic governors. When one considers the legislative and gubernatorial information together, the importance of Republicans becomes even more evident. No state with a Democratic governor and two Democratic houses of the legislature passed a strong charter school law in this period.29 In all ten strong-law states, at least one house of the legislature or the governorship was controlled by the Republican Party when the strong law passed. In sum, charter school laws have emerged in states with a variety of partisan configurations, a fact that lends credence to the charter strategy’s reputation as a bipartisan reform. But: (1) Republican control of state legislatures appears to have created more hospitable circumstances for charter laws; (2) almost all strong charter laws have been signed by Republican governors; and (3) no state in which Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the governorship had put a strong charter school law on the books by January 1996. Teachers’ Organizations Teachers’ organizations are active in every state, but they are politically stronger in some states than in others. Since teachers’ organizations generally have opposed charter school laws and have without exception opposed strong charter laws, one would expect states with lower union membership to be more likely to adopt charter laws and to adopt strong laws. The two major teachers’ organizations whose state affiliates are involved in politics are the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association (NEA).

28 It is also possible to determine whether the observed differences are statistically significant by conducting a test of “the equality of independent proportions”; see Richard J. Larsen and Morris L. Marx, An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications, 2d ed.(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1986), pp. 378-80). The discussion treats a difference as important only if it met standards of statistical significance. Full details of this procedure and the test statistics from this analysis can be found in Bryan Hassel, “Designed to Fail? Charter Schools and the Politics of Structural Choice,” Ph.D. diss.. Harvard University, 1997. 29 Across the board, Democratic control is fairly common. Of the 245 state-years in the period 1991-95 (five for each state, excluding nonpartisan Nebraska), Democrats controlled both houses of the legislature and the governorship in 72 state-years.

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The combined membership in these two organizations as a percentage of a state’s population is a good measure of the potential political strength of teachers’ organizations in the state. In 1991 this measure ranged from under one-half of 1 percent in some states to just over 2 percent in others, with a median of 1.1 percent.30

30 Membership data for 1991 from American Federation of Teachers, “Membership by State,” mimeograph (Washington: American Federation of Teachers, 1998), and National Education Association, NEA Handbook (Washington, 1991-92), table 2. Population data for 1991 from U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Estimates of the Population of States: Annual Time Series, July 1,1990, to July 1,1997” (Washington, 1997).

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As Table 2-2 indicates, the prevalence of teachers’ organizations in states bore little relation to charter school policymaking outcomes in the early to mid-1990s. Contrary to prediction, states with high teacher association membership were slightly more likely than low-membership states both to pass charter school laws and to pass strong charter school laws, but neither difference is statistically significant. Educational Conditions Are states with relatively high- or low-performing education systems more or less likely to pass charter school laws? To pass strong charter school laws? This analysis employs a measure of mathematics proficiency for the states’ eighth-graders: their average proficiency in all content areas of the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).31 The median state’s average score on this assessment was 267.4, with state averages ranging from 246.5 to 283.4. One can divide the states into two groups—”high-score” (those with better-than-median performance) and “low-score” those with median-or-worse performance—on each of these two measures. Table 2-2 shows how many states in each group passed charter laws and strong laws. States whose eighth-graders scored at or below the median NAEP math tests were more likely than their above-median counterparts to pass charter laws, but the difference was not statistically significant. Higher- and lower-performing states were almost equally likely to pass strong charter school laws. NAEP performance, then, does not appear to have differentiated charter-law adopters from nonadopters, or states that adopted strong laws from those that did not.32 “Culture” Since many contemporary theories of state-level political culture derive from Elazar’s typology, this part of the discussion begins by examining whether states with different Elazar-type cultures passed different types of charter school laws in the 1990s.33 According to Elazar’s classification, 16 states exhibited “individualistic” cultures, 18 exhibited “moralistic” cultures, and the remaining 16 exhibited “traditionalistic” cultures.34 Table 2-2 shows that states with moralistic political cultures were more likely than other states to pass charter laws (and to pass strong ones) by January 1996, but the differences are not statistically significant. A second notion of political culture concerns the innovativeness of states. The literature on policy innovation in the states suggests that more “modern” states are more likely to

31 The analysis uses 1992 data because 41 of the 50 states participated in that year, many more than in 1990. The NAEP math test includes several content areas; this analysis uses pooled scores for all content areas. Data used for this analysis were derived from NAEP’s revised figures, which reflect corrections made in 1996. National Assessment of Educational Progress, “Revised Mathematics Assessment Data for Grade 8” published on NAEP’s website: http://www.ed.gov.NCES/naep. 32 A similar analysis that examined the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) rather than NAEP showed that higher- and lower-performing states on the SAT were equally likely to pass charter laws. And though lower-performing states were slightly more likely to pass strong laws, the difference was not statistically significant. 33 Elazar, American Federalism. 34 Ibid., p. 137.

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adopt innovative policies early. Two common indicators of modernity in this literature are income and urbanization. The 1990 census provides state-by-state data on both of these indicators.35 In general, charter school laws, and strong charter laws in particular, were more likely to be adopted in wealthier and more urban states. Higher-income states adopted charter laws at twice the rate of lower-income states. More strikingly, they adopted strong charter laws at four times the rate of lower-income states. Much the same was true for the more urban states. More urban states adopted charter school laws at just short of twice the rate of less urban states. And they enacted strong charter laws at nine times the rate of their less urban counterparts (see Table 2-2). Combining the two variables, one finds that only three of the 20 states that were at or below the median on both income and urbanization adopted charter school laws, whereas 17 of the 30 that were above the median on at least one measure did so. And not a single state that was at or below the median on both income and urbanization passed a strong charter school law in this period. It appears that traditional determinants of states’ “innovativeness” would have been reasonably good predictors of the adoption of charter school laws in the first half of the 1990s. One problem with analyses such as these is that, because they examine only one factor at a time, they may fail to account for what happens when all of the factors are at play at the same time. Variables that appear unrelated to charter decisions may take on more significance when one takes account of other factors. By the same token, variables that appear important in these simple analyses may look less significant when all factors are considered. Ideally, one would include all the hypothetically important factors in a single analysis to produce more compelling results. With only 50 states to examine, however, it is difficult to conduct an analysis that includes so many independent variables.36 A second-best approach is to conduct an analysis that includes the factors that appeared important in the above analyses (partisan control of the governorship and legislature, indicators of economic development traditionally linked to innovativeness, and political culture) along with union strength.37 If any major problems arising from a failure to control for relevant variables exist, such a procedure should reveal it.38

35 The income measure is median household income for a state in 1990; see U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, series P-60 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), table H-8. Urbanization is the percentage of residents living in urban areas in 1990; see U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Population and Housing Unit Counts, CPH 2-1” 1990 Census of Population and Housing (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), table 1. Household income in states ranged from $20,178 to $40,805, with a median of $29,253. The percentage of residents in urban areas ranges from 32.2 percent to 92.6 percent, with a median of 68.8 percent. 36 Instead of regarding states as observations, one could regard state-years as observations. Such a procedure would increase the “n” from 50 to 228 and enable a more sophisticated analysis. The problem with this technique is that the only independent variables that change significantly from year to year within a state are partisan control and, to a lesser extent, educational conditions. The others—union membership and the various measures of culture—either remain constant or are not measured each year. 37 Union strength was included because, among the variables that appeared insignificant in the bivariate analyses, union strength carries the most theoretical importance, since unions are typically among the most vocal opponents of charter legislation. Other analyses, not reported here, included the other nonsignificant

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The importance of a state’s level of economic development, a traditional correlate of “innovativeness,” comes through strongly in this analysis. As in the simpler analyses above, charter school laws were both more likely to emerge and to be strong in more developed states. The results are more mixed for the degree of Republican control. When other factors are taken into account, it appears that charter laws were no more likely to emerge in states with strong Republican control. However, strong charter laws were still much more likely to emerge in states where Republicans held the upper hand. The most interesting finding to emerge from this more complex analysis, however, concerns the relationship between Republican control and high levels of teacher unionization: strong charter school laws were most likely to be formulated in states where Republicans held the upper hand and teachers’ unions were strong. Fully half of the strong laws were developed in states where Republicans consistently controlled the governor’s mansion and where unions were strong. Given the apparent importance of governors in determining the strength of charter laws, how did these political actors shape the outcomes of charter school policymaking in their states? In light of the significance of at least partial Republican control of state legislatures in the passage of strong charter laws, how did the legislative process unfold when charter laws were considered? How did states’ income and urbanization affect their charter school politics? And how can one account for the finding that high-union Republican states were the most fertile territory for strong charter school laws? Finding answers to these questions requires more than a bird’s-eye view of the politics of charter schools. More detailed case studies of the process of charter school policymaking in several states may shed light on these questions… Chapter 7. Politics, Policy, and the Future of Charter School Programs… New Paradigms of Oversight For charter schools to be viable, they need support. But they also need to exist in a regulatory climate that holds them accountable without imposing unnecessary burdens. Both of these two points—accountability and minimal burden—are vital to the charter idea. In some respects they are the two sides of the bargain offered by charter schools: accountability in exchange for a grant of autonomy. But designing a system that strikes this balance has proven challenging for charter-granting agencies. It is useful to consider these challenges in two categories: those relating to charter schools’ accountability for academic results, and those relating to charter schools’ accountability for compliance with whatever residual regulations apply to charter schools. variables (indicators of educational conditions) and found that (1) they remained insignificant and (2) their inclusion did not affect inferences about the importance of the other variables. 38 These results derive from two probit analyses, one in which the dependent variable was the passage of a charter law by January 1996, and one in which it was passage of a strong charter law by January 1996. Independent variables included a composite variable summarizing the degree of control held by Republicans in both the legislature and the governorship; a composite of income and urbanization; a variable indicating a moralistic political culture; and the measure of the strength of the unions used in Table 2-2. Full details of the construction of variables and the results of the models are available in Hassel, “Designed to Fail?”

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Accountability for Academic Results In principle, each charter school signs a contract with a charter-granting agency that spells out the academic results the school is expected to achieve over the term of its charter. For example, a school might promise that a certain proportion of its students will perform above grade level on a particular assessment or achieve a specific level of improvement over a period of time. When it comes time to consider renewing the school’s charter, the charter-granting agency can evaluate the school’s progress against these clearly articulated standards. And in cases of extremely low performance, the charter-granting agency could revoke a school’s charter before the charter’s renewal date. Behind this simple formulation, though, lies a complex set of issues with which most charter-granting agencies have only just begun to grapple. As a result, the Hudson Institute’s nationwide study of charter schools concluded that “today’s charter school accountability systems remain underdeveloped, often clumsy and ill-fitting, and are themselves beset by dilemmas.”39 Charter-granting agencies are struggling with how charter schools should fit into existing state and district standards and testing regimes; how to handle accountability for charter schools with unconventional goals, learning processes, or student populations; how precisely to implement the “meet your goals or lose your charter” requirement; what actions to take before a school’s renewal date (if any) if a school is not performing adequately; and the basic question: how good is good enough? Some charter-granting agencies (notably the Massachusetts state board of education, the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, and the Chicago Public Schools) have developed detailed policies on these issues, but many others have not. Thus, from the public’s point of view, the degree to which charter schools will truly be held accountable for performance is unclear. Until charter-granting agencies have policies in place that define charter schools’ accountability for results, taxpayers cannot feel confident that the bargain of autonomy for accountability is working. From the perspective of charter schools, the absence of clear accountability systems makes it difficult to act decisively in the development of their schools. And uncertainty about how they will be judged presents problems for charter schools when they approach lenders and landlords about undertaking long-term obligations. If the charter renewal process is cloaked in mystery, lenders and landlords have trouble evaluating the risk of offering loans or leases to charter schools, a problem that exacerbates already severe facilities problems. Consequently, both the public at large and individual charter schools have a direct interest in the development of systems for holding charter schools accountable for results. More indirectly, the broader public school system might benefit from the work charter-granting agencies do to develop these systems. Public school districts and state education agencies everywhere are struggling with how to hold schools accountable for results…[C]harter school programs are potential laboratories for finding answers to these questions.

39 Bruno V. Manno and others, Charter School Accountability: Problems and Prospects, part IV of Chester E. Finn Jr. and others, Charter Schools in Action: A Final Report (Washington: Hudson Institute, 1997), p. 1.

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Accountability for Compliance Though free from many laws and regulations, even charter schools in states with the strongest laws are subject to some restrictions. These fall into three categories. First, charter schools remain subject to federal law, which state charter laws, of course, cannot waive. Charter schools must provide a “free and appropriate public education” to children with special needs, respect students’ constitutional rights, maintain nondiscriminatory policies in admission and other areas, and refrain from teaching religion. Second, most charter school laws leave at least some state-level school law in place for charter schools. For example, some charter laws require charter schools to hire only certified teachers or to meet regular state reporting requirements for student attendance and finances. Third, some charter laws impose requirements that are unique to charter schools. For example, some state laws require each school to submit an annual report on its activities. Others require that the student body of each charter school replicates the demographic characteristics of its surrounding district. …[E]ven charter schools in states with relatively strong laws have reported that a great deal of their leadership’s attention has been devoted to handling the details of administration required by residual regulation. Recall that residual regulation in states with strong laws has not kept charter schools from choosing their own paths in the areas that matter most, like what to teach and how to spend money. Rather, residual regulation’s main effect has been to divert schools’ attention and resources away from these more critical responsibilities. Without district bureaucracies to rely upon, charter schools must fulfill a host of reporting requirements and carry out other compliance activities on their own. As the infrastructure of support develops, charter schools receive more help in handling these requirements. But a more effective way to relieve charter schools of these burdens may be for chartering authorities to rethink how they ensure that charter schools comply with the laws and regulations. Simply including charter schools in pre-existing systems of monitoring and enforcement is not sufficient. These systems were designed on the assumption that central school district bureaucracies, not individual schools, would be responsible for compliance. Since districts can spread the costs over a large number of schools and students, they can afford to hire specialized staff who become well versed in the arcane details of fulfilling a specific requirement or completing a given report. Since charter schools cannot do that, the burdens of complying with these systems are often much greater than those shouldered by conventional schools. Chartering authorities could relieve this burden by rebuilding reporting and compliance systems from the ground up for charter schools. They could begin by asking what information an agency truly needs to fulfill its obligations under the law and then design systems accordingly. In isolated cases, regulatory authorities have taken this approach with charter schools, with good results. In Massachusetts, for example, charter schools do not have to engage in the same financial reporting activities that regular districts carry out. Instead, schools submit monthly reports to the state department that include financial statements, annual reports summing up the year’s activity, and annual external audits of their finances. This streamlined system gives state officials most of the information they

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need to evaluate charter schools’ spending patterns. And if they have further questions, they can always conduct additional audits. At the same time, the system places a minimal burden on charter schools. The monthly reports they are required to prepare contain information school leaders would probably pull together in any case for their own management purposes. Retooling administrative systems in this way would be of great benefit to charter schools. But the potential prize is larger than that. By experimenting with new ways of gathering information from schools and ensuring compliance with critical laws and regulations, regulators may begin to develop models of monitoring and enforcement that fulfill public obligations while placing lighter burdens on schools. If these models work in the charter school environment, there is no reason why they could not be exported to more conventional public schools as well. Conclusion For charter schools to have a positive impact on public education as a whole, policymakers will need go back to the drawing boards of charter school legislation. Charter schools and those who support them will need to develop an infrastructure of support that allows charter schools to focus on teaching and learning while remaining viable as enterprises. And regulators will need to retool systems of oversight to ensure accountability while minimizing the administrative burdens on this new form of independent public school. None of these tasks will be easy. But charter schools have already established a reputation for forging ahead even under the most difficult circumstances. They have surprised many by surviving in less-than-ideal physical surroundings and despite philosophical opposition; in that regard, at least, they stand out as a compelling example to all involved in the enterprise of public education. Perhaps despite the host of political and operational challenges they face, charter schools will surprise skeptics yet again.

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Exhibit #3: “Strong” and “Weak” Charter Laws

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Source: Center for Education Reform (http://www

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Bruno Manno talks about some of the challenges facing charter school operators and chartering agencies. Document #4: Bruno V. Manno,40 “Yellow Flag,” Education Next (Winter 2003)

Since 1991, 40 states have enacted laws allowing for the creation of charter schools—independent public schools of choice that are freed from many regulations but accountable for their results. There are now 2,700 schools that serve some 600,000 students in 34 states and the District of Columbia (see Figure 1), with cities like Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, now enrolling upwards of 17 percent of all their children in these new institutions.

While such numbers are impressive—a decade ago there were no charter schools—we also see worrisome indications that the charter movement is in trouble. In July 2002, Newsweek reported that a raft of recent charter “reports find that too often, charters haven’t lived up to their end of the bargain.” A Brookings Institution study released in September 200241 concluded that student performance in charter schools was significantly lower than that of district schools on state tests in reading and math.

At the same time, signs of a vital and thriving charter school movement abound. Nationally, demand for these schools remains high, with more than 75 percent of charters having waiting lists that together could fill at least 900 more schools. The parents, students, and educators involved with charter schools report high levels of satisfaction. A California State University, Los Angeles, study of California charters, released in March 2002, found that their test-score gains outpaced those of students in regular public schools. In Massachusetts, the test scores of charter schools on the Spring 2002 state test showed, according to the Boston Herald, “a greater number of improved scores . . . with more and more of the [charters] scoring higher than their home districts.” Even the Brookings study may say less than it seems. The investigators themselves acknowledge that their findings may be due to the fact that charters are attracting “students who were already low achieving,” a suspicion supported by other studies that find charter students to be relatively disadvantaged.

Not only are many charter schools enjoying success, but they are also held accountable in a way regular public schools are not. When a charter school experiences severe troubles, it usually faces severe consequences. To wit, more than 200 failed or failing schools have been closed on fiscal, educational, and organizational grounds.

40 Bruno V. Manno is senior associate for education at the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation and coauthor, with Chester E. Finn Jr. and Gregg Vanourek, of Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education (Princeton University Press, 2000). 41 See Hill and Lake (2002) in the bibliography in Appendix #2.

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Can Success Survive?

In the education world, however, success often breeds second-guessing if not downright resentment. The more traction a successful reform gains, the more sour grapes it harvests. Despite strong, bipartisan political support, charter schools have not been immune from this attitude. America’s deeply conservative public education system is striking back at this disruptive innovation, which shifts power from producers to consumers; demonstrates that more can be done with less at the school level; and moves control of resources from central bureaucracies to autonomous schools. Such tectonic shifts bring new uncertainties and imply that many hoary public education practices are no longer the only imaginable way to do things.

The initial efforts to stop the spread of charter schools took three main forms: preventing the enactment of charter laws; limiting the number of new charters; and ensuring that existing charter schools were as meagerly funded and as heavily regulated as possible.

These strategies succeeded to some extent. For example, Washington State, among other states, still has no charter school law—mostly because of intense opposition from the teacher unions and other interests vested in the status quo. Among those states with charter laws on the books, more than a third have fewer than 20 charter schools in operation. In addition, the early growth of the charter movement may be reaching a plateau—in part due to the hostile tactics of charter opponents.

One by one, however, states continue to come on board. In 2001, Indiana passed a strong law that allows charters to be granted not only by school districts but also by public universities and by the mayor of Indianapolis. To date, school districts have allowed two

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schools to convert to charter status; Ball State University has chartered seven new schools; and Indianapolis mayor Bart Peterson has approved four new charters. Eleven of the 13 approved schools opened their doors in September 2002.

Three-Front War

Opponents are now regrouping, as the vigorous growth of the charter movement and its impact on traditional district schools has alarmed its adversaries. The resulting attacks come from three directions: state policymakers, local school systems, and organized public education interest groups.

State policymakers have an entire arsenal of charter-harassing weapons at their disposal. These include depriving charters of full per-pupil funding; denying them access to (or financing for) facilities; placing new restrictions on existing schools or moratoriums on future growth; and weakening charter laws. Two states provide vivid illustrations.

Indiana’s entry into the charter movement was nearly arrested in early 2002 when Suellen Reid, the Republican state superintendent of public instruction, balked at giving Indiana’s new charters any money during their first semester, basing her opinion on legal advice from members of her staff. Nor would these schools be reimbursed for expenses incurred during that semester. Only a contrary ruling from the state’s attorney general (at the strong urging of Indianapolis’s Democratic mayor, Bart Peterson) led to a reversal of that decision. The reversal, however, prompted an outcry from some legislators and from the superintendents of the 11 school districts located within Indianapolis. They protested “the adverse financial effects for public schools resulting from the formation of charter schools in our county” and called for a moratorium on the creation of new charters until the “financial inequities” were resolved. Mayor Peterson refused to yield, however, and proceeded to consider a second round of 13 charter applications for the 2003–’04 school year.

California passed its charter law in 1992 (the second state to do so) and now has 362 operating charter schools. But the enemies are circling. The 2001–’02 legislative session passed five anti-charter-school bills, four of which were signed into law by Governor Gray Davis (who felt compelled, in one of his signing messages, to claim that he still “supported charter schools”). The most controversial bill gave the state board of education extensive powers to regulate independent study or “nonclassroom”-based instruction that uses computers as the main instructional tool. The bill’s intent was to force “virtual” charter schools to spend a high proportion of their budgets on certified staff rather than on technology, stifling their capacity to innovate. These “cyber” charters must now document their instructional minutes, and their per-pupil funding may be reduced if they offer less than the minimum number of student course minutes per year—a district-style regulation of the process of education without regard for outcomes.

Other proposals to cut funding for California charters emerged from the state department of finance. These would have slashed funds for students over age 18 (including former dropouts whom the charters were seeking to “recover”) and ended summer-school funding for many charter students. While these proposals were defeated by an organized charter school community led by the California Network of Education Charters, charter operators expect them back in a future legislative session.

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Local Opposition

The local districts where charters choose to locate, and from which they draw students, have felt the impact of charters most heavily. When a district loses students to a charter, most (sometimes all) of the per-pupil funding travels with those students. This places charters in direct competition with districts—and the districts, instead of competing, often try to influence the rules of the game.

In Houston, where 46 of Texas’s 219 charter schools are located, the district estimated recently that it will lose about 13,000 students to charters during this school year (up from 12,000 the previous year) at a cost of $53.5 million in state revenues. The city’s school board is thinking of asking the state to consider, before it grants any more charters, the financial impact a new charter school will have on district revenues.

Charters may cause trouble for school districts, but they often wind up saving money for the state. For instance, the Dayton, Ohio, school board claims that charters are bleeding the district of some $20 million a year. Of course, they no longer have the students to educate, either. And it costs less to educate a student in a charter than in a district school. Scholars Bryan Hassel and Deborah Page showed that during the 1999–2000 school year, charters in Ohio received about $2,300 less per pupil than local school districts. The seven largest districts in Ohio would each have received $20 to $160 million less in state funds had they operated under the charter school funding formula.

Local school districts can harass charters in many ways. They can devise application procedures with absurd time-tables or use meager funding formulas to slash the dollar allocations to charters. City development agencies, zoning boards, or fire inspectors can raise a host of regulatory problems, especially on the most difficult issue that charter schools face: finding a facility.

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In 2000, California voters approved Proposition 39, entitling California’s charter schools to facilities that are “reasonably equivalent” to those enjoyed by district schools. The Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City, California (one of the wealthiest in the state), filed suit in May 2002 in San Mateo County Superior Court to stop Aurora Charter High School from receiving its fair share—either in the form of rent money or buildings—of the $88 million bond measure that Sequoia passed in 2001. Sequoia believed that it had no legal obligations to Aurora High because, while the school is located in Sequoia, it was approved by Redwood City, an elementary-school district. Aurora argued that a substantial majority of its students live within the Sequoia district. Aurora countersued the Sequoia district in July 2002. In late August, Judge Quentin Kopp (who served in the California state senate when the Charter Act was passed) ruled that Sequoia must provide facilities for Aurora Charter High School. As of this writing, the district was considering an appeal of this decision.

In Washington, D.C., both the city and the school district are making it nearly impossible for charters to find classroom space, even though the mayor and the school district are broadly sympathetic to charter issues. D.C. law requires city officials to give charter schools the first option to buy surplus buildings—unless the city can make substantially more money by selling them to others. Naturally, this leads the fiscally strapped city to seek private buyers for those buildings in the least disrepair and to offer charters more dilapidated buildings that will cost millions to be made safe for children. One charter founder reported that the building his school was offered had “$3 million worth of asbestos issues and [would have] cost us $10 million [more] to renovate.” Meanwhile, the D.C. school system offers charters only one-year leases on vacant schools in the (unlikely) event that the district needs to reclaim the school for its own purposes.

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Interest Group Attacks

A phalanx of interests, from teacher unions to school boards and superintendents, principals’ associations, teacher colleges, disabled-rights groups, and even private schools, often find reasons to view charter schools as a threat. Let’s consider two of these: the teacher unions and private schools.

The unions’ initial response to charter laws was defiance. In time, they realized that this looked bad—the charter idea was popular in too many quarters. So they moved from outright hostility to a highly conditional embrace, with the National Education Association beginning its own charter school project in 1996 (and subsequently abandoning it). In the words of an Education Week reporter, “Both national unions have endorsed the charter idea within fairly narrow limits, requiring district control over the schools and collective bargaining for the teachers within them.” (What would distinguish such a charter school from traditional public schools remains unclear.) The American Federation of Teachers’ July 2002 report, Do Charter Schools Measure Up? which calls for a moratorium on the expansion of charters, signals a renewed hostility toward charter schools …

Today, the unions’ stance toward charters is convoluted, sometimes trying to co-opt the movement, other times trying to stop it cold.

A once-secret report prepared by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) lays out a strategy that would organize all charter employees under the NEA affiliate’s collective bargaining agreement, thereby depriving charter operators of a key element of their autonomy. As the authors explained, “The main source of the PSEA’s influence is that almost all Pennsylvania teachers are unionized. If we want to maintain influence, our ability to do anything, we must make sure that education remains a unionized industry.” Here the union is hedging its bets, trying to weaken the charter movement while also ensuring that any teachers who do slide into charter schools will remain union members.

In Ohio the unions have mounted a new effort to sink charter schools. Tom Mooney, president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, is leading two ever-widening lawsuits seeking to have the state’s charter law ruled unconstitutional. Tactics include involving all of Ohio’s charter schools in the lawsuit and requiring them to deliver school records on a variety of issues, tying up time, energy, and resources in matters far removed from classroom instruction. This courtroom effort is also apt to chill charter enrollments, teachers, and public perception of the charter movement.

Private schools also sometimes see charter schools as a threat to their finances and influence. For instance, some charter schools are attracting large numbers of students from Catholic schools. The Archdiocese of Newark has lost 139 students to charter schools; the Archdiocese of Detroit, 300 students. Of the 776 students enrolled in St. Louis charter schools, 21 percent came from private schools—13 percent from Catholic schools and 8 percent from nonreligious private schools. While private-school leaders have not grumbled openly about charters, Sister Glenn Anne McPhee of the U.S. Catholic Conference has noted that they are watching the situation closely to see what effect the charter movement is apt to have on Catholic schools over time.

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Enemies Within

Some self-inflicted wounds of the charter movement have strengthened the hands of its critics and opponents. These include greedy charter operators keener to make a quick buck at public expense than to educate children; inept operators whose schools are fiscally disastrous and academically inadequate; sponsors that exercise little care in reviewing charter proposals or monitoring the schools’ progress; and supporters who press sponsors to leave the schools alone—even to renew their charters—notwithstanding their organizational, financial, and instructional failures.

Some of these schools have engaged in egregious misbehavior. In Houston, Reverend Harold Wayne Wilcox opened the Prepared Table Charter School in 1998. It rapidly grew to 1,500 students on three campuses, making it one of Texas’s largest charters. After state auditors investigated the school’s operations, however, the Texas Education Authority concluded that Prepared Table had overstated its attendance at a cost to the state of $1.3 million; that it had commingled school funds with those of Reverend Wilcox’s church; and that it was governed by virtually the same board members as the church. It also found that members of Wilcox’s family were working for the school and that Wilcox, who also served as head of the school, was given a $235,000 buyout package one week before the state convened a hearing to determine what to do with the school. The school was closed and its charter revoked in August 2002.

Forty-six California charters had their funding reduced when the state scrutinized their financial records during the 2001–’02 school year. They could not document how they had spent substantial sums of money and were unable to show what instructional services they were purchasing from private contractors. In some instances, the private vendors were members of the charter boards, posing conflict-of-interest questions.

In Arizona, a record number of that state’s charter schools—31 of 288 reviewed—were fined in 2002 because of “late audits, ignored testing requirements, and financial fraud.” This represented more schools than the total number disciplined since charters began in Arizona in 1994.

The basic charter “bargain” grants independence to school operators in return for superior academic results. But with that independence come opportunities for misbehavior—and these are apt to arise well before the results are measured. This places a heavy burden on authorizers to do careful due diligence before awarding charters and to perform ongoing reviews—without clamping down in classic bureaucratic fashion. Some sponsors are not up to this subtle, solemn responsibility.

Consider Techworld Charter School in the District of Columbia. The school was chartered by the elected D.C. board of education in 1997 and opened the following year. It was finally closed in June 2002 after three years of accounting irregularities, governance tiffs, and over reporting of enrollments. It was placed on probation several times during those three years, but was never adequately monitored by the board, which in 2000 was replaced by a new hybrid board of elected and appointed members. The new school board set out to close down the school but encountered a belligerent principal. Just before its closing, he instructed the school’s financial manager to award him a $20,000 bonus, along with $5,000 each to eight other employees, including his wife. The school’s board of

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directors began to consider legal action against the principal, whose wife then changed the password to the computer files containing students’ grades, hoping to force the board members not to prosecute her husband. The school’s directors eventually retrieved the grades through a costly reconstruction of the computer records and turned the matter over to federal prosecutors.

The new D.C. school board moved during the 2001–’02 school year to close three other schools chartered by the previous board. They had an array of problems: overcrowded classrooms with little ventilation, high absentee rates, few textbooks and other instructional materials, abysmal academic results, and failure to file financial reports and to offer the advertised courses. This “cleanup” action could be traced to the failure of the old board to exercise adequate due diligence in approving the original charter application and monitoring the schools. This behavior contrasts sharply with the approach of the alternative, nondistrict chartering authority in D.C., the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which has chartered nearly 20 schools, none of which has been closed.

Counter Attack

The charter movement can no longer coast on a theory and a hope. It has a track record, if not a solid one. This has given new opportunities to those who never liked the charter movement in the first place. But there are ways to strengthen the charter movement to counter the attack. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, created in 2001, is the kind of institution necessary to support the charter school movement as it matures. Members regularly receive information on topics of high interest to charter authorizers, such as evaluating charter applications and school performance, negotiating accountability agreements, renewal/revocation decisionmaking, policy updates, and state-by-state information on authorizers.

Also needed is a national organization dedicated to pressing the charter movement to clean up its act and deliver the results promised by charter boosters. It would also recruit new charter supporters at the state and local policy level, especially since many governors, legislators, and local activists who gave birth to the charter effort have since moved on to other endeavors. Their successors are disposed to view charters as someone else’s idea; are more aware of charters’ problems than their successes; and are being skillfully manipulated by interests that have finally recognized that charters aren’t going away.

Despite the premise that charter schools are to be given flexibility in return for being held accountable for their results, few charter schools have actually been closed because of poor academic performance. Frederick Hess sees the problem as a political one: the differing stakes between charter school families and members of the broader community. Document #5: Frederick M. Hess,42 “The Political Challenge of Charter School Regulation,” Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 85, No. 6, March 2004, pp. 508-512. 42 Frederick M. Hess, a former high school social studies teacher, is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C. His latest book is Common Sense School Reform (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

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In the era of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, charter schooling holds out the promise of meaningful accountability without the heavy hand of assessment systems based on standardized testing. As an alternative to state-designed systems that apply to all schools, school charters can provide more nuanced accountability models that address particular issues raised by a school’s mission, the nature of its student population, and so on. In fact, a great irony of education reform is that many critics of standardized accountability have also often opposed choice-based reform. The reality is that choice-based reform offers a way to address the public’s demands for accountability without leading to the standardization that has characterized test-based statewide systems. Recognizing the promise of the charter school model, many proponents have sought to refine its accountability mechanisms and authorization processes. These are good and useful steps. However, given that charter schools are publicly funded and ultimately accountable to public entities, the largest hurdle to effective accountability may be the political challenge—one that has too rarely been given its due consideration. Consequently, the current system for shuttering ineffective charter schools is compelling in theory but uneven in practice, and most proposed remedies do not address the root of the problem.43 Charter schooling faces challenges to effective accountability on both the “front end”—the authorization of schools—and the “back end”—the closure of ineffective schools. In this discussion, I focus entirely on “back end” accountability, which poses the toughest political problems (for reasons that will shortly become obvious). The essential “deal” implicit in charter schooling is that, in return for being freed from many of the rules and regulations endured by traditional district schools, charters are to be held accountable for their results.44 Those schools failing to meet the performance provisions specified in their charters or failing to uphold applicable state and local laws can be closed by their authorizing body.45 As the Center for Education Reform has posited, “[Charter] closures provide real contractual accountability, a feature that too often is missing at many traditional public schools.”46

43 Sandra Vergari, ed., The Charter School Landscape: Politics, Policies, and Prospects (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002). 44 Joe Nathan, Charter Schools (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996). 45 In various states, chartering bodies include state boards of education, state charter school boards, local school districts, universities, and municipalities. However, because most chartering bodies are public boards, our discussion will focus on these. Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education Reform, 2000), p. 95. 46 Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education Reform, 2000), p. 95.

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Two Visions of Charter School Accountability In fact, the most recent figures show that charter school accountability is primarily about shuttering schools with low enrollment, facility problems, financial improprieties, or mismanagement rather than about monitoring or ensuring adequate academic performance. As of 2002, 194 (6.95%) of the 2,790 schools that had ever received charters and opened their doors had been closed, but just 0.005% had been closed for reasons related to academic performance.47 While some schools that deserve to close are indeed being shut down, this record does not fulfill the promise of charter school accountability. Accountability must be more stringent if it is to provide a viable long-term alternative to state assessment systems. Why have the accountability provisions in existing charters not led to more aggressive enforcement? What would it take to fulfill the promise of charter school accountability? Clearly part of the answer is technical—improving and expanding the tools and capacity/ expertise of oversight bodies and addressing the lack of solid data. These concerns are valid and important; however, a greater challenge for charter schooling is that it faces two competing and contrasting visions of accountability: the “market model” and the “regulatory model.” The market model presumes that families will hold charter schools accountable by fleeing bad schools. Such a model is agnostic about what constitutes a “bad” school, leaving consumers free to decide in the same way they judge whether a gourmet vegetarian bistro or a renowned steakhouse is “better.” In such a system, schools are free to operate in any fashion, take on any mission, and measure their performance in any manner, just so long as they are able to attract and retain a sufficient number of students. The regulatory approach is a response to two democratic concerns.48 First—as there is no consensus on what schools should do—the broader community fears that some families may prefer schools that violate shared norms regarding the need for schools to teach certain content, perform at a certain level of competence, or cultivate certain attitudes and behaviors.49 Second, the community fears that some families are too incompetent or ill informed to make choices in their child’s best interest. Regulation ensures that families make “appropriate” choices by shutting down schools that the larger community deems unacceptable. Regulatory accountability, in judging which schools are acceptable, requires the broader community to do two things that strike at the heart of the market model. First, it requires the community to agree on standards against which schools will be judged. These standards can include graduation rates, student test performance, teacher certification, 47 Charter School Closures: The Opportunity for Accountability (Washington, D.C.: Center for Education Reform, 2002). Reasons for closure could not yet be determined for 40 of the closed schools, suggesting that a few additional schools might also have been closed for reasons related to academic performance. 48 Stephen Macedo, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 49 An important point needs to be made here. "Community" does not refer to the local community. Rather, we are referring to the larger political community -- generally at the state level -- that is responsible for shaping the relevant dimensions of education policy.

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curricular elements, or any number of things. Because the public is of multiple minds about which elements of schooling or which outcomes are most important, standards tend to be vague and focused more on inputs (i.e., certain procedures must be followed) than on outputs (i.e., the value that schools add).50 Second, regulatory accountability requires the community to close charter schools that fail to meet these standards—even if families choose to continue sending their children to these schools. If every family chose its children’s schools in an acceptable manner, such regulation would be unnecessary; so the basic assumption of the regulatory model is that regulators will countermand the choices of some families. The problem is that we all tend to care more strongly about what is best for our own children than what is best for the anonymous masses. This means that, although the vast majority of Americans support the regulation of charter schools in the abstract, attempts to hold a particular charter school accountable will feature a clash between the marginally concerned public and the intensely concerned families who have chosen that school. When an oversight board decides to close or not to renew an existing school, it must enforce the abstract preferences of an inattentive majority against the wishes of families who have decided that the school is both satisfactory and desirable. The Challenge of Regulatory Accountability The challenge posed by charter school regulation is obvious once we understand it as a political, rather than an educational, issue. The challenge becomes concrete when the dispersed interests and loose association of the broader community confront the intense interest and relative concentration of a charter school community. Children are enrolled in a charter school because their families have chosen that school. Parents who seek out, apply to, and transport their children to a charter school obviously regard it as superior to their local public school. Moreover, even if parents did not strongly believe this prior to enrolling their child, it is likely that they will come to view the school positively over time, if only to justify their decision and subsequent efforts. A charter school community is a self-selected and easily organized group. Charter school families share a common concern, are in repeated contact, and have an organizational link that can facilitate communication and the dissemination of information. Similarly, charter school teachers have chosen to become faculty members of the school, are in daily contact, and find it a simple matter to share information with one another and with the parents of their students. Meanwhile, members of the broader community have no particular stake in a charter school that their children do not attend. Consequently, the inattentive broader community is unlikely to get exercised enough to want to close a school, unless a situation arises that is so egregious as to command public attention. For instance, when a school is

50 See Terry Moe, Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001), for extensive discussion of public attitudes on these issues.

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preaching racist doctrines or engaging in financial improprieties, the violation of agreed-upon norms is clear enough that the broader community will endorse intervention to prohibit families from “wrongly” choosing the school. This helps explain why the vast majority of shuttered charter schools are closed for reasons relating to finances, facilities, or mismanagement. Such cases, however, say little about our ability to shutter academically mediocre but otherwise inoffensive charter schools. The influence of charter school constituents is strengthened by our system of representative democracy and permeable bureaucracy. Democratic governments do not give the preferences of all voters equal weight. The political process permits those with strong preferences to exert a disproportionate level of influence in a number of ways. Consequently, elections reflect not simply the amount of support for and opposition to a proposal, but also the intensity of those views. This dynamic is even more evident in legislative and bureaucratic processes, where only those with an intense interest in an issue seek to influence governmental decisions at this level. Voters who will be only marginally affected by the resolution of an issue have little incentive to spend time or resources seeking to influence the outcome. Moreover, in our system of government, the actions of legislators and public administrators can be readily monitored by those who have the incentive to do so, enabling concerned voters to identify, pressure, and punish “unfriendly” officials. In the case of charter school regulation—especially given the openness of most charter review processes—it is a simple matter for mobilized communities to bring pressure to bear. Meanwhile, the larger public has no reason to mount a parallel effort. Because charter school regulatory boards are generally state bodies with roles and budgets shaped directly by the state legislature, they have little incentive to offend vocal constituencies in the name of the abstract ideal of accountability. So long as a school is enrolling students, those students’ families clearly believe the performance to be acceptable. Closing a school by failing to renew its charter requires that the authorizing body tell the school’s supporters that they are either ignorant (unable to judge school quality) or misguided (unconcerned with quality). When the aggrieved, emotionally invested, and easily organized charter school community rallies to oppose the decision, there is no similar incentive for the broader community to seek enforcement. In fact, if the school in question is not breaking laws or operating in a scandalous fashion, a push to close it down raises uncomfortable questions about how to “fairly” measure school performance and when parents should be denied the right to choose a school that they deem appropriate. As a result, it will be the exceptional situation in which regulators will refuse to renew the charter of even a mediocre school, so long as it enrolls more than a handful of students and has not engaged in gross misconduct. What can be done about this? Improving Regulatory Accountability for Charter Schools Today, the promise of regulatory accountability in charter schooling is largely unfulfilled, permitting incompetent school operators to stay in business, weakening the cause of charter reform, and providing ammunition to critics and those who would subject charter

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schools to more standardized accountability regimes. Charter school proponent Bruno Manno has noted that some self-inflicted wounds of the charter movement have strengthened the hands of its critics and opponents. These include . . . inept operators whose schools are fiscally disastrous and academically inadequate . . . and supporters who press sponsors to leave the schools alone—even to renew their charters—notwithstanding their organizational, financial, and instructional failures.51 Moreover, failing to recognize the source of the problem, proponents too often exaggerate the benefits that the current system of charter school accountability is likely to deliver. Political forces will tend to render regulatory accountability ineffective unless the system is intentionally crafted to resist such pressures. A failure to address this fact will strengthen those who oppose charter schooling and make it more difficult for it to fulfill its promise. There are four basic strategies that legislators and program designers might use to enhance regulatory accountability for charter schools. Because we don’t live in Wonderland, none of these strategies offers an instant remedy and each incurs real costs. However, they do provide options that may deliver on the promise of charter school accountability—if we are serious about doing so. Raising the bar. Charter school communities do not become political constituencies until the members come together over a common interest and form an organized network. So the easiest solution to the political dilemma of accountability is to prevent communities of advocates for low-performing charter schools from forming in the first place. This suggests a rigorous screening of charter schools before they are permitted to open. While current authorization processes are demanding, they tend to focus on procedural requirements rather than on evidence that the proposed school is likely to achieve its agreed-upon goals. A rigorous screening approach cannot eliminate the possibility that ineffective schools will emerge, but it can minimize the number of such schools. Such an approach would constrain innovation and would strongly encourage applicants to replicate models that had succeeded elsewhere. Our current approach is far more receptive to the notion that charter schooling offers the opportunity for innovative schools to form. However, it is important to recognize that the current authorization process—despite the well-intentioned efforts of screening committees and authorizing boards—inevitably helps to ensure that ineffective charter schools will open. Once open, some of these schools may continue to attract students, bringing us back to the central regulatory dilemma. Tying their hands. A second approach to reducing the politicization of charter school accountability systems is to limit regulatory discretion. Rather than require regulators to make judgment calls about closures or nonrenewals, legislators can transform authorizing boards into the executors of automatic decisions. The easiest way to do this is by writing charter school contracts with clear, quantitatively measurable goals and then making charter renewal contingent on achieving those goals. Such an automatic trigger will permit oversight boards to sympathize with sanctioned schools while pleading helplessness. 51 Bruno Manno, "Yellow Flag," Education Next, Winter 2003, p. 21. [Document #4 above.]

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Meanwhile, such a stance can be defended as reflecting an unwavering commitment to high standards. Cities such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., have taken steps to implement such a model but then granted regulators substantial leeway when deciding whether schools have fulfilled their contract terms. Efforts to build regulatory discretion into the evaluative process, while admirable, will inevitably undermine the effectiveness of this remedy. The “mandatory nonrenewal” approach requires some standardization of assessment measures in order to enable regulators to automatically determine whether or not a charter school has met its goals. Theoretically, such standardization can coexist with campus flexibility—allowing schools to design an array of appropriate indicators and to find creative ways to measure their goals. However, interpreting non-quantitative measurements tends to require judgment calls, while increasing the number of indicators to be considered in evaluation may result in more mixed outcomes and a less straightforward assessment of school performance. Both situations would require regulators to exercise more discretion and would put them back into a politicized environment in which aggressive regulation would be difficult. In practice, therefore, clear-cut decisions on nonrenewal of school charters are much more likely when based on a limited number of quantitative measurements. The Federal Reserve model. A third approach is a “Federal Reserve” model, in which charter oversight boards are isolated from public pressure and provided with significant resources and a clear sense of institutional mission. Such an approach would require extended terms for board members, a “professional” and less partisan approach to board appointments, and sufficient staffing to permit board members to thoroughly and independently analyze school performance. Insulating charter school regulators from public pressure while providing them with the reputational and organizational resources to defend their decisions would enable them to more effectively defend the diffuse “general” interest against particularistic sniping. Of course, this model runs counter to the conviction of many charter school advocates that education ought to be more democratic, that the role of professional educators should be reduced, and that public schools already suffer from excessive bureaucratization and intrusive regulation. Competitive authorizers. A final approach shifts from the explicitly regulatory focus of the first three models and relies on a quasi-market that is driven by authorizer self-interest. If charter school oversight boards have an incentive to protect and cultivate a “brand name”—either because they are competing for-profit entities or because they are nonprofit institutions (such as universities) that may suffer real costs from a loss of reputation—there is cause to presume that they will aggressively police the schools they authorize. Public regulatory boards, on the other hand, traditionally have had little cause for such concerns because, while a reputation for probity gains them little, aggressive regulation will increase the enmity of aggrieved school communities. Thus far, our very limited experience with universities charged with authorizing charter schools has provided little evidence on this matter.

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Of course, a market model threatens notions of lay control, site autonomy, and community influence that have been central to the argument for charter schooling. Charter schools authorized and overseen by brand-conscious firms may be less diverse and autonomous than those under the current system, as firms seeking to enhance their market share are apt to assess performance on the basis of popular and saleable measures—not necessarily those most appropriate to the school at hand. The Promise of Charter School Accountability The larger lesson here is twofold. First, if we are serious about charter school accountability, we have to consider which arrangements will be most effective. Thus far, policy has been marked more by high hopes and good intentions than by realistic appraisals. Second, meaningful accountability will require us to carefully design regulatory mechanisms, but we must also recognize the trade-offs implied by the nature of charter schooling itself. If we are to devise a more balanced and defensible system of charter school accountability, we need to take a hard look at the requirements of meaningful regulation. In the world of NCLB, if charter schooling is to provide a safe space for distinctive educational visions to demonstrate their value, powerful accountability mechanisms that can rival mandatory testing systems are imperative. To date, we have not seriously addressed this challenge. It is past time for us to get started.

· · ·

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The following table gives information to update the figures contained in Documents #3-5: Exhibit #4: Charter School Enrollment and Closures, by State

Source: http://www.edreform.com/_upload/cer_charter_survey.pdf

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And here, from the trenches, is some evidence that closing a charter school ain’t eay. Document #6: Caroline Hendrie, “Charter Authorizers Eye Rules on Closings,” Education Week, February 2, 2005

Ask James N. Goenner the hardest part of closing down a charter school, and he doesn’t hesitate for a moment.

“One of my toughest days on the job,” he said, “was when I had a 5- or 6-year-old girl ask me, ‘Mr. Goenner, why are you taking away our school?’ ”

As the executive director of the charter school office of Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Mich., Mr. Goenner has been through the ordeal of shuttering a school more times than he wants to recall. Now he is among a growing cadre of charter school authorizers who are giving hard thought to how to manage a process that can be painful and messy for all concerned.

With the nation’s charter sector now encompassing some 3,200 schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia, shutdowns have become more common occurrences in the past few years. An estimated one in every 10 charter schools has now closed its doors, up from only about 4 percent four years ago.

Most authorizers who take their responsibilities seriously agree that weeding out bad schools is a vital component of the autonomy-for-accountability bargain at the heart of the charter school concept. But amid the sparks thrown off by closings, those authorizers are often ending up singed.

As shutdowns grab headlines—particularly when schools collapse in midyear, stranding students, families, and staff—their authorizers may come under fire for how they’ve handled the process. Even orderly, planned closures have sparked fierce political battles that have sometimes led authorizers to give struggling schools another chance. Publicized failures have spurred states to implement new rules aimed at tightening oversight, sometimes to the anguish of freedom-loving charter operators and their authorizers.

As a result, leaders among the authorizers that grant the publicly financed but independent schools their contracts to operate—including states, school districts, universities, and others—are getting serious about sharing their experiences and finding better ways to pull the plug.

“It’s easy to talk about the theory of closing down schools, but it’s much more difficult to really close a school,” Mr. Goenner said. “And until you’ve done it once, you really can’t understand the ramifications.”

As they struggle to develop policies and protocols to shut weak charter schools, authorizers are grappling with issues that may increasingly apply to regular public schools as they fall under sanctions for subpar performance imposed by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

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At the same time, charter closings pose some unique challenges to those who want to see the sector succeed. The very process that charter advocates can point to as “accountability in action” can help opponents paint grim pictures of charter schooling. Revocation or nonrenewal of a school’s charter to operate can undermine support among parents and the public, who may see closed schools as a failure of the whole chartering idea. Closures may not go over big with policymakers, either.

Catch-22

“There’s definitely a Catch-22 at play here,” said Mark Cannon, the executive director of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, based in Alexandria, Va.

Hundreds of charter schools have now folded, usually after being open just a few years, or even a few months.

According to the Center for Education Reform, a pro-charter organization based in Washington, approximately 350 such schools had gone belly up as of the end of the 2003-04 school year, for a closure rate of nearly 10 percent of all the charter schools that had opened since the first charter was awarded in Minnesota in 1992.

That contrasts with a closure rate of 4 percent listed in the center’s 2001 report, when just 86 of the 2,150 charter schools that had opened by that point were known to have shut down.

The center is still confirming and analyzing the reasons for last school year’s closures for a report expected in the coming months. In the past, though, the center has found that closures have been triggered principally by factors other than academic performance—such as fiscal difficulties, mismanagement, low enrollment, or facilities problems.

Some charter school critics say that pattern needs to change. Joan A. Devlin, an associate director in the educational issues department of the American Federation of Teachers, said authorizers need to close more schools for poor academic performance, and then be upfront about their reasons, instead of citing various operational deficiencies.

“They need to be more honest about it,” she said. “That was part of the bargain: ‘We’ll give you this autonomy, and in turn you’ll raise student achievement.’ ”

Whatever their reasons for shutting a school, authorizers are finding that the process can become drawn-out and disruptive. Especially for those authorizers aiming to strengthen the charter sector—in contrast to those who devote scant resources to the job—getting their act together on closures has become a major topic of debate.

Sharing Experience

Processes for dissolving unsuccessful schools are not usually what authorizers focus on in their early years, when they are still figuring out how to handle applications for new schools, noted Nelson Smith, the president of the Charter School Leadership Council, based in Washington.

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But as authorizers have been around for a while, and as the charters they have granted come up for renewal, they are finding a need to make up for lost ground, he said.

“Honestly, there’s a lot of catch-up to be done, and I’m speaking as a former authorizer,” said Mr. Smith, who was the first director of the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, which was formed in 1996 to focus on chartering schools in the nation’s capital.

Interest in the closure issue was evident in Philadelphia last October at the national conference of Mr. Cannon’s group, NACSA, where sessions on ending unsuccessful schools were well attended.

“There are two things that can be damaging to the charter school movement: keeping open bad schools and mucking up closures,”Martin S. Dezelan, the director of the office of charter schools at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., said at one such session. “Both are communications nightmares.”

When faced with shutting a fledgling Indiana school for poor performance last year, Mr. Dezelan turned to Mr. Goenner’s staff at Central Michigan University.

The CMU staff provided him with a “wind-up and dissolution checklist,” a six-page document outlining the tasks involved in terminating a school. Seven of the 87 schools that Central Michigan has chartered over the past 10 years have folded, and the checklist was drawn up to handle those situations.

Need for ‘Triage’

That sort of sharing is becoming more common. According to Mr. Cannon, authorizers are learning that they need to expect the worst and assume that an operator who has done a poor job of running a school will come up equally short in shutting it down. And sometimes, experience has shown that disgruntled operators go out of their way to “exit in the worst way possible,” he said.

“The authorizer really has to develop a triage team that swoops in quickly before an unscrupulous operator is able to do damage,” he said. “The big issues are protecting the kids and the money.”

An example of a particularly unfortunate exit came just last summer, Mr. Cannon said, with the meltdown of a chain of charter schools run by the California Charter Academy. The Victorville, Calif.-based organization ran roughly 60 sites under four charters that were serving more than 12,000 students as of last June, according to the California Department of Education.

Academy officials decided to abruptly fold amid an investigation by the state education department into alleged wrongdoing, which the academy denied. The closings left thousands of students in the lurch shortly before the start of a new school year. And while other charter schools absorbed many of them, the episode was still hugely disruptive.

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Another high-profile closing last year was of the 450-student John A. Reisenbach Charter School in New York City. The school was among the first three schools authorized by the State University of New York’s Charter Schools Institute to come up for review of their five-year charters.

Over bitter protests from parents, the university’s board of trustees decided against renewing the Reisenbach school’s charter last February. The decision was backed by an extensive report by the institute’s staff recommending closure for academic, fiscal, and other deficiencies.

Parents complained that they lacked better options for their children, a factor that SUNY officials say made their decision harder. And as the summer shutdown date approached, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein of New York City and City Councilwoman Eva S. Moskowitz were among those who urged the board to reconsider. But the university stuck to its guns.

This year, the SUNY institute has 13 more schools up for renewal, and lessons learned last year have prompted some changes. Last summer, the institute gave the boards of the schools a heads-up that nonrenewal was an option. And in response to complaints from Reisenbach parents that they had learned too late that the school was in trouble, the institute’s executive director, James D. Merriman, met personally with parents from each of the five schools this past fall and explained the situation.

During those meetings, Mr. Merriman said, “I was struck by the low level of knowledge about the charter concept itself.” So he has decided to produce and distribute a primer on chartering to the parents of all SUNY-authorized schools, which will include warnings about the risks of closure for poor academic performance.

Even with such information, parents are unlikely to be happy about the idea, Mr. Goenner of Central Michigan University said.

“When you preach the accountability message—if they don’t perform, we’ll shut them down—it’s a complete red flag to parents,” he said. “Parents of the kids say, ‘If the school’s not performing, change the leadership, don’t put my child on the street.’ ”

In the long run, many charter experts say that the best way to cut down on closures is to screen charter applicants better and continuously monitor schools’ progress. For that to happen, they say, authorizers need the will and resources to perform their roles effectively.

At the moment, though, as charter leaders pursue the twin goals of expanding the number of charter schools and upgrading their quality, few see the need for closings disappearing anytime soon.

“The toughest part of this,” Mr. Smith of the Charter School Leadership Council said, “is to get parents and other people to accept that sometimes closing a school is a healthy thing.”

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Considerable research has been conducted to determine whether and to what degree charter schools are an improvement over non-charter public schools. Among the more ambitious studies is that of Zimmer and Buddin, who compared a sample of 352 California charter schools with a sample of 245 non-charter schools looking at some 24 student, school, teacher and principal characteristics. Following is their paper: Document #7: Ron Zimmer and Richard Buddin, Getting Inside the Black Box: Examining How the Operation of Charter Schools Affect Performance (Los Angeles: Rand Corporation, 2005) Abstract: In recent years, a series of papers have examined the performance of charter schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Buddin and Zimmer, 2005; Sass, 2005; Bifulco and Ladd, 2005; Hanushek et al., 2002). However, this research has not examined the school attributes that lead to high- or low-achieving charter schools. In this paper, we use student-level achievement and survey data of charter schools and a matched-set of traditional public schools from California to take an initial step into examining correlations between school operational features and student achievement. While we did not find characteristics that consistently lead to improved student achievement, we did identify some features that are more important at different grade levels or in charter schools versus in traditional public schools. We also examined the relationship between greater autonomy within schools, which is a major tenet of the charter movement, and student achievement and found very little evidence that greater autonomy leads to improved student achievement. Introduction In education, few topics have created as much debate as charter schools, which are publicly supported schools given greater autonomy of operation in exchange for public accountability. Since charter schools’ inception in 1991, the charter school movement has seen tremendous growth as 40 states plus the District of Columbia have passed charter school laws. Currently, more than 3,500 charter schools enroll nearly 1 million students nationwide. As the charter school movement has grown, rhetoric from advocates and opponents has dominated the debate about their effectiveness. Only recently have researchers been able to provide any quantifiable results, which are mostly mixed. However, this research has generally treated charter schools as a monolithic group, which might not be the case. Part of the impetus for charter schools is to create autonomous schools, which would become incubators of creative and innovative ideas (Kolderie, 2004; Finn et al., 2000; Nathan 1996; 1998). As with any innovation, successes and failures will occur, but part of the point is to learn from them. Therefore, it is imperative that researchers begin prying open the black box of charter schools and look for the correlates of success and failures. In this paper, we take a first step toward this goal by using both student achievement and school survey data to examine how the organizational structure and operation of charter and traditional public schools affect performance. In the next section, we first outline the

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findings from the previous research. Then we describe the data and research approach for our analysis and finally, provide results and conclusions. Literature Review As the charter movement has grown, so has the research of the performance of these schools. Most of this research has examined charter schools in individual states, including Arizona (Solmon et al., 2001), California (Zimmer et al., 2003; Buddin and Zimmer, 2005), Florida (Sass, 2005), Michigan (Eberts and Hollenbeck, 2002; Bettinger, 2005), North Carolina (Bifulco and Ladd, 2005), Texas (Gronberg and Jansen, 2001; Booker et al., 2004; Hanushek et al., 2002), and Pennsylvania (Miron, et al., 2002).52 In addition, a few recent studies have examined student achievement in charter schools nationally, but these have primarily relied on point-in-time school-level data, which cannot account for the effects charter schools have on the growth of student achievement (AFT, 2004; Hoxby, 2004; Carnoy et al., 2005). Overall, the research on charter schools has revealed mixed results ranging from slightly positive, to no effect, to negative impacts. Zimmer et al. (2003) and Buddin and Zimmer (2005) argue that measuring the effect of charter schools is complex and it is difficult to paint a single picture of the performance because charter schools vary from school to school. The authors illustrate this point by showing that the performance of charter schools varies by schools started from scratch (startup schools), schools that convert from public schools (conversion schools), and schools that offer a significant portion of instruction outside of traditional classrooms (nonclassroom-based schools). These results suggest that charter school performance could vary by the operation and organizational structure of schools and underscores the need to examine these aspects of charter schools in greater detail when evaluating their performance. However, part of the challenge of addressing this need is that researchers have generally treated charter schools as a black box, and have failed to examine the actual organization or operation of these schools. Most of the research has focused on teachers. For instance, Bomotti, Ginsberg, and Cobb (1999) and Burian-Fitzgerald, Luekens, and Strizek (2004) examined teacher experience and turnover rates and found that charter schools tend to have less-experienced teachers and more turnover than traditional public schools. In another study, Burian-Fitzgerald (2004), utilizing a national sample of charter and traditional public from the nationwide Schools and Staffing Survey, found that charter schools can create slightly higher levels of collaboration among teachers. Other studies have examined the operation of charter schools more broadly; such studies include Miron and Nelson (2002), which used a survey of all of Pennsylvania charter schools. Zimmer et al. (2003) surveyed both charter and traditional public schools in California. This analysis 52 Hoxby and Rockoff (2004) also examined four charter schools in Chicago, which provided some evidence that charter students outperform noncharter students. Their analysis capitalized on the fact that these schools are oversubscribed and used a lottery mechanism to admit students. Presumably the lottery winners and losers are similar in every way except admission into these schools. Tracking performance of both sets of students then creates an unbiased perspective of performance. However, Hoxby and Rockoff’s study has a major drawback in that it may have limited implications for those schools that do not have waiting lists. In fact, you would expect schools with waiting lists to be the best schools, and it would be surprising if they had the same results as other charter schools

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suggested that charter schools provide more instructional hours in non-core subjects, such as fine arts and foreign languages, but are less likely to offer some types of programs, including gifted programs. Also, startup charter schools are more likely to mainstream students for special education. In addition, charter-school principals reported having less- experienced and less-credentialed teachers. While the above research has been informative, the authors have not taken the next step and examined how these variations may affect student achievement. Ted Kolderie (2004), who was instrumental in passing the first charter law in Minnesota, argues that charter laws are intended to create schools with a wide variety of educational and operational approaches and that learning from their experiences requires understanding differences in how different charter schools operate. By having a better understanding of how charter schools operate, we can begin to understand what leads to improved performance. Such understanding is a critical step toward realizing the hope that charter schools could be laboratories and incubators for promising educational practices that might be used in all schools. Data Our analysis uses data from a survey of charter and traditional public schools as well as test score data from schools included in the survey sample. Below, we describe these two data sets. Surveys To examine the operation of charter and traditional public schools, we surveyed principals of charter schools and a matched sample of traditional schools in spring 2002. These surveys used consistent questions as much as possible to allow comparisons. To identify the universe of California charter schools, we created a list by merging the California charter school office’s publicly available data with the charter schools listed in the 2000–2001 California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS). Schools were eligible if they opened before September 15, 2001, and had a status of “operating” as of February 2002. In total, 357 schools met these requirements. We then contacted the individual schools and their respective chartering authorizers to verify the data in our initial list. We made changes in our database to reflect updated information obtained during these interviews, including adding schools that were not in our original list. Twenty schools were added to our sample this way, while 25 were eliminated. Thus, the final sample included 352 charter schools. One limitation to this method is the small possibility that a charter school was not included in our sample because it was not entered in either the California charter office data or the CBEDS data. The creation of a match sample of noncharter comparison schools was crucial to our analysis. In the past, researchers have generally found that charter schools disproportionally serve low-income and high-minority students (Gill et al., 2001; Zimmer et al., 2003; Finnigan et al., 2004), which may influence the schools’ cost and governance structures. To avoid confounding differences associated with school type with differences related to students served, we matched charter and noncharter schools by an estimated propensity

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score (Rosenbaum and Rubin, 1983). The propensity score is the probability that a school with a given set of characteristics is a charter school as opposed to a traditional public school. These propensity scores can then be used to match charter schools to noncharter schools by finding those with similar propensity scores. To carry out the propensity match, we used a four-step process. First, we stratified charter schools into eight categories (elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, county schools, continuation schools, juvenile hall schools, special education schools, and alternative education schools) used by the California Department of Education (CDE) to designate all public school types.53 Roughly 60 charter schools were new in the 2001–2002 school year and were not included in the 2000–2001 CBEDS data, and thus, could not be matched to public schools. Second, within grade range strata, we fit a logistic regression model to predict designation (1 = charter; 0 = traditional public) as a function of aggregate school characteristics, including percentage ethnicity (percentage White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic), pupil socioeconomic status (percentage free and reduced-price lunch),54 and percentage English language learners. Using these characteristics, predicted values for charter school i and traditional public school j were created (pi and pj). Then, the distance between these schools (dij) is estimated as the absolute value of the difference between their propensity scores, dij = | pi – pj |. We calculated the distance between each charter school and every traditional public school. Fourth, we matched to each charter school a traditional school that minimizes dij over all California traditional public schools j. As part of the matching process, we allowed a traditional public school to be matched to multiple charter schools because of budget and time constraints. While the propensity scores do not create perfect matches, they do create a sample of traditional public schools with characteristics that closely resemble those of charter schools. Table 1 displays the characteristics of the matched elementary, middle, and high schools for charter and traditional public schools.

53 Some charter schools had grade ranges that intersected multiple strata (e.g., kindergarten through grade 12 school intersects the elementary, middle, and high school strata). In these cases, the charter schools were included in each category and matched to a traditional public school for each category. Because of the small sample of county, continuation, juvenile hall, special education, and alternative education schools, a propensity match was not used in these cases. Instead, if demographic data were available for these schools, the schools were matched based on the criteria of getting schools within 10 percent or racial characteristics of the charter schools. In many cases, demographic characteristics were not available for these schools and schools were matched to a traditional public school of the same school type within the district or the closest district. 54 It was later discovered that many charter schools do not participate in free and reduced-price lunch programs. Because the original propensity match included percentage free and reduced-price lunch, the final sample had to be weighted to account for this bias.

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Table 1: Ethnic/Racial and Low-English Proficient Breakdown55 School Type

Schools % White

% Black

% Hispanic

% Asian

% Other

% LEP

Charter 48.5 14.9 27.8 2.7 6.1 15.6 Elementary Non-charter 51.5 13.3 27.7 2.9 4.6 17.1 Charter 51.8 11.7 23.8 2.3 10.4 9.4 Middle Non-charter 54.3 13.8 22.5 4.0 5.4 10.6 Charter 52.9 9.6 26.4 4.0 7.1 1010 High Non-charter 53.2 5.3 23.8 6.8 5.9 10.2

Source: 2001–2002 CBEDS data. However, not all of the charter or matched traditional public schools responded to our survey. Table 2 highlights the number surveyed, the number of respondents, and the percentage response rate for each sample. The response rates were nearly 75 percent for both charter and traditional public schools. Table 2: School Survey Response Rate Survey Sample Respondents % Response Rate Charter Schools 352 257 73% Non-charter Schools 245 184 75% To adjust for differential response rates among and across charter and traditional schools, which may create bias in our results if types of charter schools are underrepresented, we weighted the data so that the sample of charter schools reflected the population of charter schools in the state. Traditional public school results were weighted to ensure comparability with the full sample of traditional public schools created through the propensity match. To weight the data for non-response, we used a logistic regression that predicts whether a school responds or not based on its demographic characteristics, including percentage racial/ethnic breakdowns, percentage free and reduced-price lunch (including a dummy variable for whether the school participated in the free and reduced-price lunch program), and percentage language proficient (Little and Rubin, 1987). In this approach, the universe of charter and traditional public schools are included in a single data set. Using the coefficient estimates from the regression, we enter each school’s characteristics to gain a predicted probability (p) of responding. This analysis weight for each charter and traditional public school that responded is the odds of responding p/(1-p) as described by Hirano, Imbens, and Ridder (2000). Table 3 displays the characteristics of the sample after weighting.

55 We only matched conventional public schools to charter schools for those schools about which we had demographic information.

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Table 3: Student Characteristics of Weighted Sample School Type %

White

% Black

% Hispanic

% Asian

% Other

% LEP

Charter 50.1 13.5 26.8 2.8 6.8 14.8Non-charter 47.4 11.6 30.7 3.9 6.4 17.7Source: 2001–2002 CBEDS data. Before proceeding, we should mention some possible drawbacks of our survey data. First and foremost, we relied on self-reported information through a survey of 9 school principals, which may contain some errors. In addition, although we had a high response rate and weighted the sample for nonresponse, we did not have a 100 percent response rate. This may have created small errors in our percentages and averages. Finally, the survey data we collected are from a single point in time, while our student achievement data (described below), are longitudinal. Our analysis combined these data to examine how operational and structural characteristics of schools affect performance. This analysis rests on the assumption that these school characteristics are consistent over time. In many, but not all cases, this appears to be a safe assumption. Student-Level Data The CDE provided individual records for all California students who took the Stanford 9 from 1998 through 2002.56 The test is administered in the spring of each year at elementary and secondary schools. Test scores are reported in terms of the percentile normal curve equivalent based on the Stanford 9 norming sample. If, for example, a student is in the 45th percentile for math in the third grade and in the 50th percentile in the fourth grade, the student’s achievement level is increasing relative to his/her grade cohort. The analysis divided students into two groups: elementary- (grades two through five) and secondary-level (grades six through eleven). The main limitation of the data is that it does not provide a student-level identifier to track year-to-year changes in a student’s test scores. Individual identifiers are important for this type of analysis because they would allow the analysis to isolate a baseline achievement level for individual students. Baseline achievement would allow the analysis to better adjust for the student’s unmeasured background, which has an ongoing effect on his or her achievement. Nevertheless, it does represent one of the most comprehensive data sets of charter schools ever compiled. For our analysis, these test score data were restricted to the sample of charter and traditional public schools included in our survey data, which includes 131, 117, and 77 charter elementary, middle, and high schools and 87, 42, and 55 traditional public elementary, middle, and high schools, respectively. The data include characteristics of charter and traditional public school students, including information on English learner

56 Starting in 2002–2003, CDE switched from the Stanford 9 to the California Achievement Tests, Sixth Edition (CAT/6) in 2003–2004. Therefore, our data sets include the full range of test scores for the Stanford 9.

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status, race/ethnicity, parent’s education,57 school lunch eligibility, and student mobility (i.e., whether the student is in the first year at his or her current school). Later in the analysis, these variables are used to adjust test scores for the effect of student background. The data file also identifies the student’s school and grade in school. Analysis Survey Analysis Table 4 presents operational or structural differences between charter and traditional public schools. We categorized these features into five categories: schoolorganizational features, school-level control, teacher quality issues, curriculum allocations, and principal background. Because many California charter schools (and some traditional schools) incorporate home schooling as part of their instructional design (Guarino et al., 2005), we asked principals what portion of their student population is instructed at home. Table 4 shows that home school instruction is much more popular among charter schools. Furthermore, 6Students were asked to report the education level of the most educated parent or guardian with whom they reside. The categories were non-high-school graduate, high school graduate, some college (including associate’s degree), college graduate, and graduate school. 11 the percentage of students instructed at home increases at higher grade levels, with charter high schools having on average, more than 25 percent of their student population instructed through home schooling.

57 Students were asked to report the education level of the most educated parent or guardian with whom they reside. The categories were non-high-school graduate, high school graduate, some college (including associate’s degree), collee graduate, and graduate school.

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Table 4: School Characteristics by School Type for TPS and Charter Schools Elementary Middle High TPS Charter TPS Charter TPS Charter School Features Students schooled at home (%) 4.1 11.6* 5.7 20.5* 7.0 25.6* Instructional days per year 179.7 180.9 180.1 185.1* 177.8 186.0 School-level Control (4-Point Scale Where 4=Full Control Student disciplinary policies 3.1 3.5* 3.2 3.6* 3.2 3.7* School assessment policies 3.0 3.5* 3.0 3.6* 3.0 3.8* Staff salaries and benefits 1.3 2.6* 1.4 2.9* 1.4 3.1* Other budgetary expenses 2.9 3.4* 2.8 3.5* 2.8 3.5* Curriculum 2.6 3.4* 2.6 3.6* 2.7 3.7* Staff hiring, discipline, and dismissal 2.8 3.3* 2.9 3.4* 2.9 3.6* Teacher Quality Issues Emphasis on full standard credential 3.7 3.7 3.6 3.5 3.6 3.4* College major in teaching field 2.9 2.9 3.0 2.9 3.5 2.9* Professional Development (Annual Participation Quartile) Workshops or conferences 3.5 3.6 3.4 3.5 3.2 3.5* Courses for college credit 1.8 2.1* 1.8 2.1* 2.0 2.2 Teacher study groups 2.7 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.3 2.4 Mentoring or coaching 2.0 2.6* 1.7 2.4* 1.8 2.3* Curriculum Allocations (5-Point Scale: 1=0 Hours/Week…5=7 or more Hours/Week English/language arts 4.7 4.4* 3.9 4.1 3.4 3.3 Mathematics 4.1 4.1 3.6 3.9* 2.1 2.3 Computer skills 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.3 0.5 0.7* Social studies 3.1 3.2 3.4 3.4 2.9 2.9 Sciences 2.8 3.0 3.3 3.4 1.9 1.9 Foreign language 1.2 1.8* 1.6 1.8 0.7 0.9 Fine or Performing arts 2.1 2.4* 2.2 2.3 0.9 1.1 Principal’s Background (Years) Leadership at current school 4.5 3.6* 4.4 3.1* 4.8 2.6* Administrative experience 12.2 8.7* 11.5 8.2* 11.9 9.6 Teaching experience 12.8 12.6 12.3 11.7 12.7 11.9 Sample Size

87

131

42

117

55

77

Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding charter school value varies significantly from the TPS value at the 5 percent significance level. Some schools (especially charters) have grades that span across the classification of elementary, middle, and high schools. These schools are included in the 12 category for each type of school. The curriculum allocations reflect fourth, seventh, and twelfth grade students for elementary, middle, and high schools, respectively. Another structural feature that may vary between charter and traditional public schools is the instructional days per year. Many charter school proponents argue that one way to improve learning is through more instructional time. For instance, the educational management organization (EMO) of Edison schools, which includes a large number of charter schools nationwide and in California, provides longer school years (Gill et al., 2005). The data in Table 4 indicates that charter schools in this study have longer instructional days than traditional public schools at middle and high school levels, but not at the elementary school level. One of the strongest arguments put forth by charter advocates for these schools is the ability to make autonomous decisions to meet the needs of their students and allow greater

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innovation (Kolderie, 2004; Finn et al., 2000; Nathan 1996; 1998). However, in cases when the charter arrangement is formed between a district and a school, the district may restrict certain liberties. Therefore, we also asked both charter and traditional public school principals about the level of control over certain operational decisions within their schools. In the survey, principals responded to a four-point scale, where 1 represented no control and 4 represented full control. Table 4 indicates that charter school principals across all levels, reported a greater level of control than traditional public school principals on all the dimensions listed. These data suggest that charter school principals do indeed have a higher level of autonomy in their schools. One of the ways in which charter schools could use this greater freedom is in the hiring and professional development of teachers.58 To examine these issues, we asked principals how much emphasis (as measured in a four point scale that ranged from not important to very important) they put on hiring credentialed teachers and teachers who majored in the field in which they teach. We also asked what percentage of teachers (through a four quartile response, with 1 indicating 0 to 25 percent and 4 indicating a 75 to 100 percent) participated in different professional development activities, including workshops or conferences, courses for college credit, teacher study groups, and mentoring and coaching. In terms of hiring practices, elementary and middle charter schools and traditional public schools placed a similar emphasis on hiring credentialed teachers as well as teachers who majored in the field in which they will teach. However, at the high school level, charter schools placed less of an emphasis on both. For professional development, charter schools at all levels placed a greater emphasis on mentoring and coaching than traditional schools. The rest of the results for professional development are more mixed with charter elementary and middle school emphasizing college courses more, while charter high schools emphasized workshops or conferences more. Another way in which charter schools could use their autonomy is through the amount of instructional time spent on curriculum subjects. We asked both charter and traditional public school principals how much time they spent on various subjects (through a five-point scale in which 1 represented zero hours and 5 represented seven or more hours). Both charter and traditional public schools reported similar number of hours spent on core subjects, with only a few statistically significant differences. Charter elementary schools reported spending a little less time on English/language arts, and charter middle schools reported spending a little more time on mathematics. However, charter schools reported spending significantly more time on computer skills at the high school level and foreign language and fine or performing arts at the elementary level. Finally, we examined the principal’s background in both charter and traditional public schools. The literature has noted the importance of principal leadership (Gates et al., 2003) to student achievement. Leadership skills may be even more important for charter schools when the principals are not only the instructional leader but also manage the operation

58 Although evidence from the literature is mixed on whether credentialing matters in relation to student achievement (e.g., Goldhaber and Brewer, 2000, 2001), politicians and educators across the country often advocate increasing the proportion of credentialed teachers within the classroom, especially in low-income schools (e.g., Darling-Hammond et al., 2001).

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and finances of the school, in many cases from scratch. Table 4 shows that principals at charter schools have significantly less experience at their current school across all levels, less general administrative experience for elementary and middle charter schools, and teaching experience similar to their traditional public school counterparts at all levels. In our student achievement analysis, we examine how variations in these operational and structural features affect performance by combining the survey data with the student achievement data. Achievement Analysis Model The statistical model of student achievement in public schools is based on a multilevel approach where random effects are estimated for each school and each grade cohort within each school. The school-level random effect allows for unobserved 15 heterogeneity across schools—i.e., the learning environment may vary systematically at different schools in ways that have a common achievement effect on the students that attend those schools. The grade-cohort effect is designed to capture the possibility that some groups of students may have a persistent achievement score effect. For example, if third grade students at a particular school score high in math in one year (relative to the classes with similar student characteristics), then the forth grade students at the same school are also likely to excel in math because of unmeasured attributes of students in the grade cohort. In addition to the random components, the model also adjusts for the individual characteristics of each student taking the test and the observed characteristics of the school as estimated in the school survey. The key student characteristics available are limited English proficiency, race/ethnicity (white non-Hispanic, black, Asian, and Hispanic), gender, and eligibility for the free or reduced-price school lunch program (a common measure of socioeconomic status). The California test data also include an indication of the parental education for each student. Finally, the data indicate whether students are in their first year at their current school. Students (and their parents) may have difficulty in making the transition to friends and teachers at a new school, so their test scores in the new school may be lower than those of similar students who remain at the same school (Zimmer et al., 2003; Buddin and Zimmer, 2005). The school characteristics are drawn from the survey data described above. Five types of school operational measures are included in the analysis: school features, school-level control, teacher quality issues, curriculum allocations, and principal background. 16 The formal model describes the relationship between student-level test scores, student characteristics, school operational measures, a random school effect, and a random grade-cohort effect within each school. The model includes dummy variables to describe any possible time trend in test scores over the five years from 1998 through 2002. The

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dependent variable is the student percentile test score, Tijkt, observed for student i in school j and grade cohort k at time t.59 The formal model is

Tijkt = xit + wjt + j + j(k) + ijkt (1) where xit and wjt are vectors of measured time-varying student and school characteristics, respectively; and are parameter vectors for student and school effects; and school and grade-cohort time heterogeneity are represented by j and j(k), respectively. The last component of the model is a random error term, ijkt, which is orthogonal to all other effects in the model. The model is somewhat simplified, because the student and school characteristic measures in the analysis do not vary over the five years of the data. Most student-level measures (race/ethnicity, gender, and parental education) do not vary. Limited English proficiency, free or reduced-price lunch status, and student mobility may vary from year to year. The school characteristics are based on a 2003 surveys of schools. These factors are unlikely to vary from year to year over the five-year analysis period. The multilevel model in Equation 1 is run separately for several specifications, so model parameters are not inherently constrained across dissimilar groups of students or schools.

• Reading and mathematics scores. Separate models are estimated for reading and mathematics test scores because student and school characteristics may have different effects on the learning environment in each area.

• Elementary, middle, and high schools. The size and mission of schools vary

substantially across these grade groups. The analysis plan allows flexibility so effects of school operational factors are not restricted to the same values across different types of schools.

• Traditional and charter schools. Models are estimated for traditional and

charters schools separately to assess how differences in school operations among each type of school affects achievement. In addition, a pooled regression shows whether differences in operations between traditional and charter schools affect student achievement.

The results are reported in separate tables for elementary, middle, and high schools students (Tables 5, 6, and 7). In each table, reading and mathematics score regressions are reported for traditional and charter schools as well as for both types of schools pooled together. The main focus of this analysis is on the effects of school operations variables on student achievement, and the regression controls for student characteristics are designed largely to isolate the effects of the operations measures. The patterns of student effects largely mirror 59 Assessments of standardized achievement tests are often subject to score inflation (Hamilton, 2003). Researchers find that scores in a state or school tend to rise over time without any commensurate increase in general learning or proficiency. This is often attributed to “teaching to the test.”

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those of previous student achievement analyses in California (Zimmer et al., 2003; Buddin and Zimmer, 2005). As expected, limited English proficiency, minority status, low socioeconomic status (eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunch or low parental education levels) are inversely related to reading and mathematics test scores in 18 elementary, middle, and high schools. Other things being equal, girls generally score higher than boys especially in the reading test. New students at a school consistently score lower on both tests than do students who are continuing in the same school. The overall trend in test scores is upward—an indication of overall improvement in students or schools or perhaps evidence of schools “teaching to the test.” Student characteristics have similar qualitative effects on test scores in both traditional public and charter schools. Elementary School Results Home schooling is inversely related to reading and math test scores. While charters have more home-schooled students, the magnitude of this effect is similar in traditional public and charter schools. There is no clear evidence on whether the lower test scores for home school students reflect poorer learning opportunities or whether these students differ in some unmeasured way from students who receive classroom instruction. The results show that the number of instructional days has no effect on achievement in reading or math. Calendars are largely standardized across districts and school types, so this result may reflect the limited variation in instructional days. Controlling for differences in operational measures and students, the overall scores of charter school students are about 1 percentile point lower in math than those for traditional public school students. In reading, the differences in scores by school type are not statistically significant. The results also indicate that greater school-level autonomy in charter schools has no significant effect on student achievement scores. Table 1 showed that charter school principals had more control over discipline, assessment, salaries, expenses, curriculum, and staff management than did traditional public school principals. After controlling for other student and school characteristics, the regression results in Table 5 show that school autonomy does not translate into better academic success in the classroom. Greater autonomy may have other benefits for teachers, parents, and students, but the evidence does not show that autonomy translates into test score improvement. A school’s emphasis on teacher quality issues is largely unrelated to test scores. An emphasis on teachers having a full teaching credential is positively related to reading and mathematics scores for traditional public schools, but not on scores in charter schools. Scores do not vary significantly based on whether the school focuses on hiring teachers with a major in their teaching field.60 Professional development opportunities in both traditional public and charter schools are largely unrelated to the achievement scores of students in those schools.

60 Teaching in field is probably more relevant for middle and high school teachers. In these higher grades, schools may try to recruit teachers with math and science majors for instruction in these subjects. At the elementary level, teachers generally have a multi-subject credential, teach a variety of subjects in their classrooms, and have a college minor in elementary school education.

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The amount of time devoted to mathematics and foreign language study do appear to affect reading and math scores. More hours per week in mathematics correlate positively with higher math scores, but the effect is significantly different from zero only for traditional schools. Surprisingly, more math instruction is also associated with higher reading scores for public schools students. Time commitments to English, computer skills, social sciences, sciences, and fine or performing arts do not significantly affect reading or math scores in either traditional public or charter schools. Foreign language instruction may be “crowding out” other learning, however. Schools with more foreign language instruction have consistently lower achievement scores in both reading and mathematics. Principal experience has little impact on student achievement. However, the principal experience measures may not capture the leadership skills, enthusiasm, and creativity that may contribute to school success. Table 5: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter Elementary Schools

Reading Mathematics TPS Charter Both TPS Charter Both

Student Characteristics Limited English proficiency -11.01*

(0.17) -11.14*

(0.22)-11.1* (0.14)

-7.17* (0.18)

-7.7* (0.23)

-7.43* (0.14

Black -9.45* (0.23)

-11.47* (0.3)

-10.27* (0.18)

-11.56* (0.24)

-13.01* (0.31)

-12.16* (0.19

Asian 2.47 (0.29)

2.86* (0.41)

2.7* (0.24)

7.62* (0.31)

8.16* (0.42)

7.86* (0.25)

Hispanic -3.54* (0.17

-5.12* (0.23)

-4.17* (0.14)

-3.31* (0.18)

-3.77* (0.24)

-3.51* (0.14)

Non-high-school graduate -2.39* (0.22

-2.66* (0.27)

-2.44* (0.17)

-2.24* (0.23)

-2.2* (0.28)

-2.21* (0.18)

Some college 4.84* (0.19)

3.91* (0.26)

4.45* (0.15)

4.38* (0.2)

3.86* (0.27)

4.17* (0.16)

College graduate 7.6* (0.2)

8.54* (0.28)

7.95* (0.16)

7.21* (0.21)

8.39* (0.28)

7.66* (0.17)

Some graduate school 11.39* (0.26)

13.68* (0.33)

12.32* (0.2)

10.77* (0.27)

12.96* (0.34)

11.66* (0.21)

Free/reduced lunch -4.55* (0.19)

-5.26* (0.23)

-4.86* (0.15)

-4.84* (0.2)

-4.71* (0.23)

-4.78* (0.15)

Female 2.95* (0.11)

2.74* (0.14)

2.87* (0.08)

0.32* (0.11)

0.15 (0.14

0.24* (0.09)

New school this year -3.37* (0.14)

-2.83* (0.18)

-3.15* (0.11)

-3.92* (0.15)

-3.25* (0.19)

-3.64* (0.12)

Year 1999 2.79* (0.19)

3.38* (0.32)

2.89* (0.16)

2.63* (0.2)

3.5* (0.33)

2.83* (0.17)

Year 2000 3.92* (0.28)

5.69* (0.42)

4.52* (0.23)

4.09* (0.29)

5.61* (0.43)

4.43* (0.24)

Year 2001 3.81* (0.3)

6.08* (0.43)

4.64* (0.24)

3.49* (0.31)

5.67* (0.45)

4.09* (0.25)

Year 2002 2.4* (0.31)

5.24* (0.45)

3.48* (0.25)

1.78* (0.33)

3.96* (0.46)

2.43* (0.26)

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School Features Students schooled at home (%)

-0.05 (0.04)

-0.08* (0.02)

-0.07* (0.02)

-0.1* (0.04)

-0.11* (0.03)

-0.11* (0.02)

Instructional days per year 0.14 (0.19)

0.02 (0.08)

0.03 (0.06)

0.11 (0.21)

0.05 (0.09)

0.08 (0.07

Charter 0.55 (0.31)

-0.98* (0.32)

School-Level Control Student disciplinary policies

2.12 (1.48)

-1.14 (1.19)

-0.27 (0.94)

2.51 (1.61)

-1.31 (1.36)

-0.23 (1.04)

Student assessment policies -0.29 (1.08)

0.38 (1.34)

0 0.83

-0.16 (1.17)

-0.09 (1.53)

0.04 (0.92)

Staff salaries and benefits 0.29 (0.93)

-1.02 (0.72)

-0.97 (0.54)

-0.6 (1.01)

-0.86 (0.82)

-1.18* (0.6)

Other budgetary expenses -0.64 (1.18)

-0.64 (1.18)

-0.22 (0.83)

-0.79 (1.28)

0.63 (1.35)

0.02 (0.92)

Curriculum 0.13 (1.41)

0.47 (1.23)

0.66 (0.87)

-0.25 (1.53)

0.04 (1.41)

0.05 (0.96)

Staff hiring, discipline and dismissal

-0.43 (1.23)

0.99 (1.05)

1.01 (0.81)

0.09 (1.34)

1 (1.2)

1.16 (0.9)

Teacher Quality Issues Emphasis on full standard credentials

3.04* (1.47)

1.26 (1.13)

2.08* (0.85)

3.2* (1.6)

1.56 (1.3)

2.08* (0.94)

College major in teaching field

-0.58 (0.87)

-0.11 (0.85)

-0.09 (0.59)

-0.34 (0.95)

0.1 (0.97)

0.3 (0.65)

Professional Development Workshops or conferences -0.14

(0.98) 0.84

(0.92)0.61

(0.66)0.32

(1.07)1.09

(1.06) 0.95

(0.73) Courses for college credit -1.39

(0.97) 0.66

(0.85)-0.03 (0.62)

-2.21* (1.06)

0.48 (0.97

-0.47 (0.69)

Teacher study groups 1.4 (0.72)

0.52 (0.67)

0.79 (0.48)

1.56* (0.78)

0.34 (0.77)

0.75 (0.53)

Mentoring or coaching 0.65 (0.83)

-0.26 (0.66)

-0.43 (0.51)

-0.31 (0.9)

-0.53 (0.75)

-0.32 (0.56)

Curriculum Allocations English/language arts 0.49

(1.45) 0.55 (1.3)

1.04 (1)

0.32 (1.58)

1.19 (1.49)

1.8 (1.11)

Mathematics 3.44* (1.73)

2.69 (1.73)

2.51* (1.19)

4.09* (1.88)

3.13 (1.97)

2.53 (1.33)

Computer skills -1.39 (1.5)

1.52 (0.99)

0.49 (0.8)

-1.44 (1.64)

1.71 (1.13)

0.53 (0.89)

Social studies -3.27 (1.68)

-1.71 (1.39)

-1.63 (1.08)

-1.99 (1.83)

-1.47 (1.6)

0.91 (1.2)

Sciences 1.83 (1.54)

-0.25 (1.25)

0.26 (0.97)

1.1 (1.68)

-0.53 (1.44)

-0.24 (1.07)

Foreign language -1.84* (0.84)

-2* (0.66)

-1.64* (0.59)

-1.66 (0.92)

-1.74* (0.76)

-1.44* (0.65)

Fine or performing arts 1.68 (1.27)

-0.08 (0.99)

0.36 (0.77)

1.12 (1.38)

-0.86 (1.13)

-0.21 (0.86)

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Principal’s Background Leadership at current school

-0.2 (0.2)

0.03 (0.21)

-0.06 (0.15)

-0.16 (0.22)

0.16 (0.24)

0.03 (0.17)

Administrative experience 0.28* (0.13)

0.06 (0.11)

0.14 (0.08)

0.25 (0.14)

0 (0.13)

0.1 (0.09)

Teaching experience 0.04 (0.1)

0.08 (0.09)

0.05 (0.06)

0.03 (0.11)

-0.02 (0.1)

-0.01 (0.07)

Constant -1.84 (32.84)

23.37 (16.49)

16.68 (12.87)

4.29 (35.82)

19.43 (18.81)

10.08 (14.27)

Random Effects School 6.78

(0.59) 6.44

(0.57)6.50

(0.40)7.37

(0.64)7.42

(0.63)7.19

(0.44) Grade cohort within school

3.59 (0.16)

4.33 (0.20)

4.01 (0.13)

4.63 (0.17)

4.87 (0.20)

4.81 (0.14)

R-squared 0.12 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.11 0.10 Number of observations 123,510 82,624 206,134 123,510 82,624 206,134 Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding regression coefficient is significantly different from zero at the 5 percent confidence interval. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. The r-squared statistic shows the reduction in the variance components for this model relative to an unconditional mean model that only adjusts for the two random effects (Bryk and Raudenbush, 2002). Middle School Results School features have somewhat different effects for traditional public and charter middle schools. Reading and math scores are inversely related to the percentage of students receiving home school instruction for charter students, but not for traditional school students. Charter students have about five more days of instruction per year than do traditional students, but this difference has no effect on either reading or math scores. Finally, the results show that, controlling for student and school operations factors, the reading and test scores are about two and three percentile points lower in charter schools than in traditional public schools. Charter middle schools have substantially more autonomy than traditional middle schools, but these differences have little corresponding effect on classroom test scores. The evidence does show that charter schools with more control of student assessment practices have higher test scores in both reading and math. The handling of teacher quality issues at different schools has little effect on student achievement. In particular, the emphasis on teachers having full teaching credentials has no effect on reading or math scores in either traditional or charter middle 23 schools. Similarly, the professional development opportunities offered by different schools do not translate into any differences in achievement. Unlike elementary schools, the amount of time each school spends on various subjects generally has little effect on test scores for either type of school. The background of each middle school’s principal also has little effect on test scores. However, the evidence does show that mathematics scores in traditional middle schools are positively correlated with the number of years that the principal has been at the school.

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Table 6: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter Middle Schools

Reading Mathematics TPS Charter Both TPS Charter Both

Student Characteristics Limited English proficiency -14.57*

(0.23 -13.40*

(0.60)-14.45*

(0.22)-10.01*

(0.23)-10.47*

(0.59)-10.12*

(0.22) Black -9.46*

(0.26) -8.33* (0.45)

-9.13* (0.22)

-10.46* (0.26)

-9.25* (0.45)

-10.12* (0.23

Asian 3.00* (0.29)

2.75* (0.79)

2.99* (0.27)

9.32* (0.29)

7.39* (0.78)

9.06* (0.28)

Hispanic -3.78* (0.20)

-2.86* (0.37)

-3.53* (0.18)

-3.44* (0.21)

-2.57* (0.37)

-3.25* (0.18)

Non-high-school graduate -1.12* (0.27)

-3.17* (0.53)

-1.63* (0.24)

0.00 (0.27)

-1.88* (0.52)

-0.47 (0.24)

Some college 4.11* (0.20)

3.28* (0.38)

3.89* (0.21)

4.37* (0.21)

3.65* (0.37)

4.19* (0.18)

College graduate 5.58* (0.21)

6.14* (0.38)

5.69* (0.18)

6.04* (0.21)

6.53* (0.38)

6.13* (0.18)

Some graduate school 11.78* (0.25)

11.46* (0.50)

11.63* (0.23)

12.48* (0.26)

11.83* (0.5)

12.26* (0.23)

Free/reduced lunch -5.38* (0.21)

-4.55* (0.32)

-5.15* (0.18)

-5.26* (0.22)

-3.04* (0.32)

-4.56* (0.18)

Female 3.06* (0.12)

3.05* (0.23)

3.06* (0.10)

0.48* (0.12)

0.26 (0.23)

0.43* (0.1)

New school this year -1.56* (0.15)

-1.42* (0.29)

-1.67* (0.14)

-1.62* (0.17)

-1.08* (0.29)

-1.48* (0.14)

Year 1999 0.54* (0.21)

1.28 (0.87)

0.64* (0.21)

0.11 (0.22)

1.18 (0.89)

0.18 (0.22)

Year 2000 0.35 (0.35)

-9.49* (1.29)

0.06 (0.34)

-1.72* (0.37)

-9.71* (1.31)

-1.5* (0.35)

Year 2001 -0.78* (0.38)

-9.47* (1.29)

-1.01* (0.36)

-4.20* (0.42)

-10.72* (1.32)

-3.65* (0.38)

Year 2002 -2.23* (0.42)

-11.34* (1.30)

-2.78* (0.39)

-6.55* (0.47)

-12.91* (1.34)

-5.97* (0.42)

School Features Students schooled at home (%)

0.05 (0.05)

-0.05* (0.02)

-0.03 (0.02)

0.02 (0.06)

-0.07* (0.03)

-0.07* (0.02)

Instructional days per year 1.58 (1.19)

-0.02 (0.05)

-0.02 (0.05)

1.91 (1.34)

0 (0.06)

0 (0.06)

Charter -1.99* (0.54)

-2.76* (0.56)

School-Level Control Student disciplinary policies 0.97

(3.15) -0.52 (1.74)

-0.32 (1.45)

0.53 (3.55)

-0.87 (2.00)

-0.39 (1.61)

Student assessment policies 3.32 (2.29)

8.03* (2.58)

2.38 (1.55)

4.91 (2.58)

8.35* (2.94)

3.4* (1.73)

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Staff salaries and benefits -1.62

(1.72) 0.57

(0.89)0.44

(0.77)-1.69 (1.94)

0.55 (1.02)

0.62 (0.85)

Other budgetary expenses -2.53 (1.95)

0.62 (1.55)

-0.15 (1.16)

-2.61 (2.20)

0.08 (1.78)

-0.63 (1.29)

Curriculum 1.6 (2.36)

-4.28 (2.44)

-1.10 (1.43)

0.95 (2.66)

-5.79* (2.79)

-2.63 (1.59)

Staff hiring, discipline and dismissal

-0.22 (1.99)

1.88 (1.63)

0.19 (1.21)

-0.76 (2.24)

2.97 (1.86)

0.56 (1.35)

Teacher Quality Issues Emphasis on full standard credentials

3.18 (2.04)

-0.28 (1.17)

0.44 (0.99)

4.11 (2.30)

0.25 (1.34)

0.99 (1.1)

College major in teaching field

-4.69* (1.91)

0.67 (1.07)

0.13 (0.89)

4.21 (2.16)

1.59 (1.22)

0.67 (0.99)

Professional Development Workshops or conferences 1.29

(1.99) 1.87

(0.98)1.53

(0.87)1.14

(2.24)1.87

(1.12)1.44

(0.97) Courses for college credit -0.36

(1.51) -1.70 (0.87)

-1.24 (0.77)

-0.20 (1.70)

-1.70 (0.99)

-1.29 (0.86)

Teacher study groups 2.23* (1.10)

0.85 (0.80)

1.04 (0.64)

2024 (1.24)

0.23 (0.91)

0.76 (0.71)

Mentoring or coaching 0.62 (1.58)

0.26 (0.73)

0.09 (0.67)

0.19 (1.78)

0.74 (0.83)

0.32 (0.75)

Curriculum Allocations English/language arts -4.29

(2.65) -0.47 (1.80)

-0.78 (1.45)

5.60 (2.99)

0.07 (2.06)

0.93 (1.62)

Mathematics 2.17 (3.32)

-0.27 (2.28)

0.44 (1.81)

3.14 (3.74)

1.44 (2.62)

2.02 (2.02)

Computer skills -1.40 (1.64)

0.27 (1.13)

-0.71 (0.93)

-1.21 (1.86)

-0.97 (1.29)

-1.40 (1.03)

Social studies 6.85 (5.79)

-1.74 (2.04)

0.99 (1.90)

6.14 (6.50)

-2.44 (2.33)

-1.92 (2.11)

Sciences -2.17 (5.98)

0.16 (1.91)

0.81 (1.83)

0.44 (6.72)

0.94 (2.18)

1.95 (2.04)

Foreign language 1.96 (1.30)

1.24 (0.88)

1.37 (0.73)

2.40 (1.47)

1.28 (1.01)

1.77* (0.81)

Fine or performing arts -2.97 (1.79)

1.43 (0.92)

0.94 (0.84)

-3.25 (2.03)

0.67 (1.05)

0.42 (0.93)

Principal’s Background Leadership at current school 0.38

(0.31) -0.21 (0.25)

0.22 (0.19)

0.80* (0.35)

0.09 (0.28)

0.44* (0.22)

Administrative experience 0.29 (0.22)

0.25 (0.13)

0.08 (0.11)

0.09 (0.25)

-0.29* (0.15)

-0.18 (0.12)

Teaching experience 0.05 (0.20)

-0.07 (0.12)

-0.01 (0.09)

-0.20 (0.23)

-0.15 (0.13)

-0.13 (0.10)

Constant -245.62 (210.13

37.79* (14.96)

43.52* (12.41)

-307.92 (237.41

32.41 (17.12)

18.30* (13.85)

Random Effects School 7.99

(1.96) 6.52

(0.62)7.31

(0.52)8.86

(1.27)7.46

(0.71)8.06

(0.59) Grade cohort within school 2.88

(0.20) 3.83

(0.28)3.54

(0.18)5.45

(0.31)4.99

(0.29)4.09

(0.21) R-squared 0.13 0.09 0.12 0.10 0.08 0.10 Number of observations 99,238 32,181 131,419 99,238 32,181 131,419

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Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding regression coefficient is significantly different from zero at the 5 percent confidence interval. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. The r-squared statistic shows the reduction in the variance components for this model relative to an unconditional mean model that only adjusts for the two random effects (Bryk and Raudenbush, 2002). High School Results The effect of school features, at the high school level, is somewhat similar to those in elementary and middle schools. As before, the number of instructional days has no effect on either reading or math scores. Other things being equal, charter school students have lower reading scores than students in traditional schools, but their math scores do not differ from one another significantly. The percentage of students instructed at home has different effects for the two types of schools. Twenty-six percent of students in the average charter high school are instructed at home, compared with only 7 percent of students in traditional public high schools. Test scores are inversely correlated with the percentage of home school students for the traditional high schools only. The explanation for this result is unclear. It may be that home school instruction means somewhat different things in the two types of schools. For example, home school instruction may be aimed at poorly motivated students with a history of disciplinary problems in traditional public high schools, while charter high schools might offer alternative curriculum options to better-motivated students.61 The evidence is insufficient to distinguish between these alternative explanations. The evidence shows that differences in school autonomy or control have no effect on student achievement. The reading scores of charter students are higher if the schools have greater control of staff salaries and benefits. This lone significant coefficient is an anomaly, however, and the coefficients for all other indications of school control are not significantly different from zero. Teacher quality issues, however, have interesting effects on achievement scores for high school students. Traditional and charter high schools both place comparable emphasis on recruiting teachers with full standard credentials. In traditional schools, this emphasis is associated with higher test scores, but charter students seem to perform better at schools where there is less emphasis on teacher credentials. The results provide some support for the hypothesis that “teaching in field” is helpful to both reading and math scores. The results show that professional development alternatives available for high school teachers have no effect on their students’ achievement. The amount of time allocated to various subjects has little or no overall effect on measured achievement in reading and math. The only significant coefficient indicates that additional science instruction is positively related to higher math scores in traditional high schools. The effects of principal’s background on school achievement scores is weak and inconsistent between traditional and charter high schools. Tenure as principal at the school

61 Anecdotal evidence from principals suggested that many of the traditional public school-affiliated students who receive instruction at home have health issues that limit their attendance or have disciplinary problems.

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is tied to higher math scores for traditional high schools only, but has no significant effect on reading in either traditional or charter schools. Administrative experience actually has a negative effect on reading and math at traditional high schools. The results consistently show that prior teaching experience by the principal has no affect on student test scores. Table 7: Multilevel Regression Results for Traditional Public and Charter High Schools

Reading Mathematics TPS Charter Both TPS Charter Both

Student Characteristics Limited English proficiency -16.46*

(0.16) -10.18*

(0.54)-16.03*

(0.16)-8.97* (0.17)

-3.30* (0.53)

-8.63* (0.17)

Black -10.74* (0.18)

-9.14* (0.43)

-10.74* (0.16)

-11.82* (0.19)

-7.82* (0.42)

-11.48* (0.17)

Asian 30.3* (0.17)

0.99 (0.88)

2.98* (0.16)

11.81* (0.18)

3.95* (0.86)

11.62* (0.17)

Hispanic -5.08* (0.12)

-3.38* (0.32)

-4.92* (0.11)

-5.57* (0.13)

-2.84* (0.31)

-5.31* (0.12)

Non-high-school graduate -0.75* (0.18)

-1.95* (0.42)

-0.99* (0.17)

0.01 (0.19)

-1.19* (0.41)

0.25 (0.17)

Some college 5.48* (0.15)

5.65* (0.34)

5.44* (0.13)

4.63* (0.16)

4.28* (0.33)

4.51* (0.14)

College graduate 7.22* (0.14)

5.41* (0.35)

6.93* (0.13)

6.91* (0.15)

3.76* (0.34)

6.44* (0.14)

Some graduate school 15.62* (0.17)

13.03* (0.57)

15.31* (0.17)

14.90* (0.19)

9.67* (0.56)

14.38* (0.17)

Free/reduced lunch -4.40* (0.15)

-1.43* (0.31)

-3.81* (0.14)

-3.55* (0.16)

-0.67* (0.30)

-3.01* (0.14)

Female 3.01* (0.08)

2.82* (0.22)

3.00* (0.08)

-0.97* (0.09)

-0.78* (0.22)

-0.93* (0.08)

New school this year -0.69* (0.12)

-1.33* (0.29)

-1.77* (0.11)

-1.04* (0.13)

-0.17 (0.28)

-1.01* (0.12)

Year 1999 0.58* (0.16)

-1.05 (0.97)

0.55* (0.16)

0.05 (0.17)

-4.20* (0.98)

0.11 (0.17)

Year 2000 -2.28* (0.29)

-3.19* (1.49)

-1.59* (0.29)

-2.90* (0.32)

-6.72* (1.48)

-2.33* (0.30)

Year 2001 -2.01* (0.32)

-3.44* (1.51)

-1.45* (0.31)

-4.20* (0.35)

-9.10* (1.51)

-3.75* (0.33)

Year 2002 -4.46* (0.35)

-7.98* (1.52)

-4.38* (0.33)

-8.03* (0.39)

-15.06* (1.53)

-7.99* (0.36)

School Features Students schooled at home (%)

-0.15* (0.07)

0.08 (0.05)

0.02 (0.04)

-0.26* (0.08)

0.07 (0.06)

0.01 (0.04)

Instructional days per year -0.75 (0.53)

-0.07 (0.06)

-0.03 (0.05)

-1.18 (0.66)

-0.11 (0.07)

-0.02 (0.06)

Charter 1.86* (0.60)

0.9 (0.65)

School-Level Control Student disciplinary policies -2.35

(2.18) 1.23

(3.20)-2.48 (1.71)

-1.96 (2.74)

0.00 (3.66)

-3.04 (2.04)

Student assessment policies 0.06 (1.16)

-0.92 (3.07)

0.07 (1.19)

-0.29 (1.47)

5.43 (3.49)

1.65 (1.42)

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Staff salaries and benefits -0.66 (1.26)

2.77* (1.37)

1.49 (0.95)

-2.52 (1.58)

1.94 (1.56)

0.77 (1.13)

Other budgetary expenses 1.32 (1.80)

3.14 (2.79)

-0.11 (1.56)

1.65 (2.26)

-1.37 (3.17)

-1.39 (1.86)

Curriculum 0.74 (1.33)

-3.15 (3.30)

0.30 (1.21)

0.14 (1.67)

-1.43 (3.76)

-0.86 (1.44)

Staff hiring, discipline and dismissal

2.14 (1.86)

-4.44 (2.61)

-0.88 (1.47)

4.49 (2.33)

-1.69 (2.97)

0.96 (0.76)

Teacher Quality Issues Emphasis on full standard credentials

4.50* (2.11)

-5.04* (1.76)

-2.91* (1.28)

4.58 (2.65)

-4.84* (2.01)

-2.44 (1.54)

College major in teaching field

1.65 (0.56)

1.69 (1.82)

3.02* (1.12)

3.53 (1.94)

3.99 (2.07)

4.75* (1.34)

Professional Development Workshops or conferences 0.62

(1.25) -1.45 (1.99)

-1.07 (1.06)

0.36 (1.57)

2.54 (2.28)

-0.24 (1.27)

Courses for college credit 1.56 (1.38)

-0.95 (1.59)

-0.30 (1.01)

1.44 (1.73)

-2.38 (1.82)

-0.27 (1.21)

Teacher study groups -1.51 (1.11)

-0.08 (1.16)

-0.08 (0.75)

-2.17 (1.40)

-0.41 (1.33)

-0.56 (0.90)

Mentoring or coaching -0.04 (1.19)

-1.05 (1.28)

-0.86 (0.86)

0.66 (1.50)

-1.52 (1.46)

-0.52 (1.02)

Curriculum Allocations English/language arts -1.62

(2.03) 0.82

(2.74)-0.34 (1.60)

-3.81 (2.56)

-0.08 (3.13)

-0.77 (1.91)

Mathematics -2.06 (2.41)

4.95 (3.84)

-1.22 (1.92)

-3.33 (3.03)

4.78 (4.35)

-2.02 (2.30)

Computer skills -1.26 (2.62)

-1.13 (2.02)

0.56 (1.38)

-2.19 (3.27)

-2.94 (2.30)

-1.57 (1.66)

Social studies 0.24 (1.85)

-2.67 (3.40)

-1.33 (1.69)

-0.31 (2.34)

-1.61 (3.88)

-0.91 (2.02)

Sciences 4.55 (3.07)

-2.67 (3.48)

2.33 (2.33)

8.93* (3.85)

-2.56 (3.96)

4.25 (2.78)

Foreign language 2.35 (1.56)

3.19 (2.30)

1.49 (1.28)

1.55 (1.97)

1.83 (2.62)

1.33 (1.54)

Fine or performing arts -4.17 (3.21)

0.98 (2.06)

-1.18 (1.57)

-3.78 (4.02)

0.73 (2.35)

-0.64 (1.88)

Principal’s Background Leadership at current school 0.51

(0.29) -0.76 (0.43)

0.26 (0.25)

0.78* (0.37)

-0.84 (0.49)

0.31 (0.29)

Administrative experience -0.47* (0.20)

-0.06 (0.20)

-0.03 (0.14)

-0.60* (0.25)

0.08 (0.23)

0.06 (0.17)

Teaching experience -0.01 (0.14)

0.15 (0.22)

0.02 (0.12)

0.06 (0.18)

-0.14 (0.25)

-0.03 (0.14)

Constant 160.55 (90.03)

83.87* (20.45)

63.62* (13.92)

239.52* (112.48

66.05* (23.26)

56.32* (16.64)

Random Effects School 5.63

(0.85) 7.32

(1.10)7.28

(0.66)8.65

(0.81)8.27

(1.30)7.01

(1.09) Grade cohort within school 3.09

(0.17) 3.68

(0.37)3.23

(0.16)4.85

(0.22)5.34

(0.42)4.93

(0.27) R-squared 0.18 0.11 0.17 0.14 0.09 0.14 Number of observations 199,654 28,801 228,455 199,654 28,801 228,455

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Notes: An asterisk indicates that the corresponding regression coefficient is significantly different from zero at the 5 percent confidence interval. Standard errors are reported in parentheses. The r-squared statistic shows the reduction in the variance components for this model relative to an unconditional mean model that only adjusts for the two random effects (Bryk and Raudenbush, 2002). Conclusions As the charter movement presses forward, we argue that it is important for researchers to take a closer look at the operation and structure of charter schools to examine features that may affect student achievement. In this paper, we have taken an initial step towards this goal by comparing survey data of operational and structural features of charter schools and traditional public schools with student achievement data from these same schools. While the findings do not point to specific and consistent patterns of successful or failing schools, some interesting results emerge. One of the more interesting results goes to the heart of the charter movement, which has called for greater school autonomy. Our analysis suggests that while charter school principals do have greater control over decision-making than their counterparts in traditional public schools, we found no strong evidence that this autonomy leads to higher test scores. In addition, while charter schools tend to provide more instructional hours in noncore subjects, more time does not lead to improved student achievement. In fact, greater emphasis in foreign languages may result in to poorer math and reading test scores. On the other hand, many parents may not be as concerned with math and reading test scores and appreciate the greater emphasis on noncore subjects found in charter schools. Also, the analysis generally suggests that the greater the proportion of students instructed at home, the lower the test scores of the school. Other results vary by grade arrangements or school type. For instance, emphasizing hiring teachers with full standard credentials has a positive effect in traditional public high schools, negative effect in charter high schools, and no effect in middle and elementary charter or traditional public schools. We believe that as researchers delve deeper into the operation and structural features of schools, we will begin to understand how to reform schools in smart and strategic ways. We argue that this study is a first step towards that goal, and we hope that sparks other additional steps towards understanding the correlates of successful schools.

REFERENCES AFT (F. H. Nelson, B. Rosenberg, and N. Van Meter). “Charter School Achievement on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress.” Washington, D.C.: American Federation of Teachers, August 20, 2004. Bettinger, E. P. “The Effect of Charter Schools on Charter Students and Public Schools.” Economics of Education Review, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 133–147, 2005. Bifulco, R. and Ladd, H. “The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina.” Education Finance Policy, Forthcoming, 2005. Bomotti, S., R. Ginsberg, and B. Cobb. “Teachers in Charter Schools and Traditional Schools: A Comparative Study.” Education Policy Analysis Archives, Vol. 7, No. 22, 1999.

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Booker, K., Gilpatric, S., Gronberg, T.J., & Jansen, D.W., “Charter School Performance in Texas.” Private Enterprise Research Center Working Paper, Texas A&M University, 2004. Bryk, A. S., & Raudenbush, S. W. (2002). Hierarchical Linear Models: Applications and Data Analysis Methods. Sage: Newbury Park, CA. Buddin, R. and R. Zimmer. “A Closer Look at Charter School Student Achievement.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2005. Burian-Fitzgerald, M. “Average Teacher Salaries and Returns to Experience in Charter Schools.” Working Paper, 2004, Available at: http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/OP101.pdf, accesses October, 2005. Burian-Fitzgerald, M., Luekens, M. T., & Strizek, G. A. (2004). Less red tape or more green teachers: Charter school autonomy and teacher qualifications. In K. Bulkley & P. Wohlstetter (Eds.), Taking Account of Charter Schools: What's Happened and What's Next (pp. 11-31). New York: Teachers College Press. Carnoy, M., R. Jacobsen, L. Mishel, and R. Rothstein. The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement. Economic Policy Institute, 2005. Darling-Hammond, L., B. Berry, and A. Thoreson, “Does Teacher Certification Matter? Evaluating the Evidence,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2001, pp. 57–77. 32 Eberts, R. W., & Hollenbeck, K. M. “Impact of Charter School Attendance on Student Achievement in Michigan.” Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 02-080, 2002. Available at: <http://www.upjohninstitute.org/publications/wp/02-80.pdf>; accessed September 2, 2004, Finn, C. E., B. V. Manno, and G. Vanourek, Charter Schools in Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Finnigan, K., Adelman, N., Anderson, L., Cotton, L., Donnelly, M.B., and Price, T. Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program: Final Report. U.S. Department of Education, 2004-08, 2004. Gates, S. M, J. S. Ringel, L. Santibanez, K. E. Ross, and C. H. Chung. Who Is Leading Our Schools? An Overview of School Administrators and Their Careers. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, MR-1679, 2003. Gill, B., L. Hamilton, JR Lockwood, J. Marsh, R. Zimmer, D. Hill, and S. Pribesh. Inspiration, Perspiration, and Time: Operations and Achievement in Edison schools. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, MG-351, 2005. Gill, B. P., M. P. Timpane, K. E. Ross, and D. J. Brewer, Rhetoric Versus Reality: What We Know and What We Need to Know About Vouchers and Charter Schools, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, MR-1118, 2001. Goldhaber, D., and D. Brewer, “Does Teacher Certification Matter? High School Teacher Certification Status and Student Achievement,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 22, No. 2, 2000, pp. 129–145. Goldhaber, D., and D. Brewer, “Evaluating the Evidence on Teacher Certification: A Rejoinder,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 1, 2001, pp. 79–86. Gronberg, T. J., and D. W. Jansen, “Navigating Newly Chartered Waters: An Analysis of Texas Charter School Performance,” San Antonio and Austin, TX: Texas Public Policy Foundation, 2001, available at http://www.tppf.org. Guarino, C, R. Zimmer, C. Krop, and D. Chau. Nonclassroom-Based Charter Schools in California and the Impact of SB 740., MG-323, RAND Corporation: Santa Monica, CA, 2005.

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Hamilton, L., “Assessment as a Learning Tool,” Review of Research in Education, 2003, 27: 25-68. Hanushek, E. A., J. F. Kain, and S. G. Revkin, “The Impact of Charter Schools on Academic Achievement,” unpublished paper, December 2002. 33 Hirano, K., G. Imbens, and G. Ridder, Efficient Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Using the Estimated Propensity Score, National Bureau of Economic Research Technical Report, Working Paper 251, 2000. Hoxby, C.M. “A Straightforward Comparison of Charter Schools and Regular Public Schools in the United States.”, 2004, available at http://post.eocnomics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/hoxbycharters.pdf , accessed January 2005. Hoxby, C.M, and J.E. Rockoff. “The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement.” Working Paper. Harvard University, 2004. Kolderie, T. Creating the Capacity for Change: How and Why Governors and Legislatures Are Opening a New-Schools Sector in Public Education. Education Week Press, 2004. Little, R. J. A., and D. B. Rubin, Statistical analysis with missing data. New York: Wiley, 1987. Miron, G. N., & Nelson, C. What’s Public About Charter Schools? Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc., 2002 Miron, G., N. C. Nelson, and J. Risley, Strengthening Pennsylvania’s Charter School Reform: Finding from the Statewide Evaluation and Discussion of Relevant Policy Issues, The Evaluation Center: Western Michigan University, 2002. Nathan, J., Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity for American Education, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Nathan, J., “Controversy: Charters and Choice,” The American Prospect, Vol. 9, November–December 1998, available at www.prospect.org. Rosenbaum, P., and D. B. Rubin, “The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects,” Biometrika, Vol. 70, 1983, pp. 41–55. Sass, T.R. (2005). “Charter Schools and Student Achievement in Florida.” Working Paper: Florida State University. Solmon, L., K. Paark, and Garcia, D. “Does Charter School Attendance Improve Test Scores? The Arizona Results.” Phoenix, AZ: Goldwater Institute Center for Market Based Education, 2001. Zimmer, R., R. Buddin, D. Chau, G. Daley, B. Gill, C. Guarino, L. Hamilton, C. Krop, D. McCaffrey, M. Sandler, and D. Brewer, D., Charter School Operations and Performance: Evidence from California. Santa Monica, CA., RAND Corporation, MR-1700, 2003.

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In 2003-04 there was a sudden and unexpected drop in the number of new charter school openings. Some speculated that the interest in charters had peaked; others cautioned that a single year doesn’t constitute a trend. Figures from subsequent years suggest that new charter school openings has settled in at about 350 per year, down from the peak year, 1999-2000, during which 466 new charter schools opened. Document #8: Darcia Harris Bowman, “Charter school openings lowest in six years,” Education Week, February 18, 2004. This school year saw the lowest number of new charter schools since 1997, with 309 opening compared with a high of 466 four years ago, figures from the Washington-based Center for Education Reform show.62

Despite the dip, down from 395 openings in the 2002-03 school year, supporters of the independent public schools who gathered in the nation’s capital last week for the release of an annual CER report appeared unconcerned. They pointed out that the number of charter schools nationwide still grew by 10 percent in spite of opponents’ efforts to curb the movement’s growth.

“It’s just a circumstantial breath—this will not slow down,” said Dan Quisenberry, the president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies and one of the speakers at a Feb. 11 press conference held here to unveil the center’s annual scorecard of state charter school laws.

James Merriman, the president of the State University of New York’s Charter School Institute, agreed. “Certainly, after states first passed laws authorizing charter schools, there was a flood of pent-up demand,” he said. “That demand has been satisfied to some extent, but in my state, [New York City Schools] Chancellor Joel Klein is looking to have 50 charter schools open next year, and Buffalo city schools is looking to turn into an all-charter district.”

“I don’t see any evidence of a slowdown,” he added, “but I do see an increase in quality.”

Strong States Jeanne Allen, the president of the CER, a research and advocacy organization that favors school choice, attributed the drop in charter school openings to lobbying in state legislatures by teachers’ unions, school board associations, and other critics. In Ohio, for example, a coalition led by the state affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers has mounted an ongoing campaign opposing charter schools in that state.

62 Center for Education Reform, Charter School Laws Across the States: Ranking and Scorecard (8th Edition). Available at http://www.edreform.com/_upload/charter_school_laws.pdf

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Charter Trends63

Net new schools Total schools

2007-08 347 4,2252006-07 352 4,0002005-06 305 3,6482004-05: 347 3,3432003-04: 309 2,9962002- 03: 395 2,6872001- 02: 420 2,2672000- 01: 395 1,8721999- 2000: 466 1,4061998- 99: 396 1,0101997- 98: 233 77711-year average 360.5Source: Center for Education Reform (http://www.edreform.com)

A flood of new laws allowing charter schools passed in 1996, Ms. Allen said, “and that led to the large increase in new school openings in 1999-2000. Suddenly people who didn’t want charters woke up and said, ‘Gosh, we’d better go to the legislature and stop this.’” But a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers, in Washington, suggested that factors beyond opposition may be contributing to the slowdown in openings. She pointed, for instance, to evidence of mixed student performance and dissatisfaction with for-profit companies that manage many of the nation’s charter schools. “The hopes and optimism evident at the outset of the charter school movement are still there, but now that we have years of evidence to look at, there’s more caution,” said Celia H. Lose of the AFT. The main thrust of the new CER report, “Charter School Laws Across the States 2004,” is that “strong” state charter school legislation—that is, laws that offer maximum flexibility in exchange for academic performance and don’t arbitrarily limit the number of such charters allowed—make for successful schools. This year, the center labeled 26 states as having strong laws, and 15 with weak charter laws.

63 The table has been updated to include figures from 2004-2008. (Source: Center for Education Reform)

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Making Gains? “Of the 26 strong laws, 65 percent of those states saw significant gains in the evaluations of test and [federal] No Child Left Behind data over two years,” according to the CER report. “Of the weak laws, only two states demonstrated positive gains.” The report notes, however, that many of the states with weak laws have yet to release “reliable data on charter achievement.” The states with the most charter schools topped the CER’s list of states with strong laws. Arizona, which has more charter schools than any other state, at 464, ranks first on that list; Florida, with 277 such schools, is rated eighth; and California, with 430 charter schools, ranks 15th. Minnesota, which in 1992 became the first state to open a charter school and now hosts 88, ranks second. The District of Columbia, whose 39 charter schools enroll 15 percent of the city’s public school students, is third. The report also touches on research by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, that shows that a disproportionate number of charter schools are not making “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, compared with traditional public schools. “This is not a surprise,” the CER says in its report. “A majority of the nation’s 2,996 charter schools serve at-risk and disadvantaged populations or children unsatisfied with traditional public schools.” Strong laws that give charter school educators the freedom to meet educational standards as they see fit will make a difference over time in student achievement, Ms. Allen predicted. Another measure of charter school performance—indeed the dominant one in this era of the ubiquitous standardized test—is test scores. During the summer of 2004, a study by the American Federation of Teachers (no supporters of charter schools they) showed that buried in data published by the Department of Education was the fact that charter school students were underperforming their opposite numbers in traditional public schools. Document #9: Diana Jean Schemo, “Charter schools trail in results, U.S. data reveals,” New York Times, August 17, 2004. The first national comparison of test scores among children in charter schools and regular public schools shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools. The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration. The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year

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behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools. Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor neighborhoods, the researchers also compared urban charters to traditional schools in cities. They looked at low-income children in both settings, and broke down the results by race and ethnicity as well. In virtually all instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in regular public schools. Charters are expected to grow exponentially under the new federal education law, No Child Left Behind, which holds out conversion to charter schools as one solution for chronically failing traditional schools. “The scores are low, dismayingly low,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a supporter of charters and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, who was among those who asked the administration to do the comparison. Mr. Finn, an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration, said the quality of charter schools across the country varied widely, and he predicted that the results would make those overseeing charters demand more in the way of performance. “A little more tough love is needed for these schools,” Mr. Finn said. “Somebody needs to be watching over their shoulders.” Mr. Finn and other backers of charter schools contended, however, that the findings should be considered as “baseline data,” and could reflect the predominance of children in these schools who turned to charters after having had severe problems at their neighborhood schools. The results, based on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the nation’s report card, were unearthed from online data by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers, which provided them to The New York Times.64 The organization has historically supported charter schools but has produced research in recent years raising doubts about the expansion of charter schools.

64 The AFT report is F. Howard Nelson, Bella Rosenberg, and Nancy Van Meter, Charter school achievement on the 2003 National Assessment of EducationalProgress (Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers, August 2004). Available at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/NAEPCharterSchoolReport.pdf. See also Robert Bifulco and Helen F. Ladd, The impacts of charter schools on student achievement: Evidence from North Carolina (Durham, NC: Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy Duke University Working Papers Series SAN04-01, August 2004). Available at http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/people/faculty/ladd/SAN04-01.pdf.

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Charters are self-governing public schools, often run by private companies, which operate outside the authority of local school boards, and have greater flexibility than traditional public schools in areas of policy, hiring and teaching techniques. Federal officials said they did not intend to hide the performance of charter schools, and denied any political motivation for failing to publicly disclose that the data were available. “I guess that was poor publicity on our part,” said Robert Lerner, the federal commissioner for education statistics. Mr. Lerner said further analysis was needed to put the data in its proper context. But others were skeptical, saying the results proved that such schools were not a cure-all. “There’s just a huge distance between the sunny claims of the charter school advocates and the reality,” said Bella Rosenberg, an special assistant to the president of the American Federation of Teachers. “There’s a very strong accountability issue here.” Of the nation’s 88,000 public schools, 3,000 are charters, educating more than 600,000 students. But their ranks are expected to grow as No Child Left Behind identifies thousands of schools for possible closing because of poor test scores. Once hailed as a kind of free-market solution offering parents an escape from moribund public schools, elements of the charter school movement have prompted growing concern in recent years. Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance, said Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University Teachers College. In California, the state’s largest charter school operator has just announced the closing of at least 60 campuses, The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday, stranding 10,000 children just weeks before the start of the school year. The math and reading tests were given to a nationally representative sample of about 6,000 fourth graders at 167 charter schools in February 2003. Some 3,200 eighth graders at charter schools also took the exams, an insufficient number to make national comparisons. The results are not out of line with earlier local and state studies of charter school performance, which generally have shown charters doing no better than traditional public schools. But they offered the first nationally representative comparison of children attending both types of schools, and are expected influence public debate. Amy Stuart Wells, a sociology professor at Columbia University Teachers College, called the new data “really, really important.” “It confirms what a lot of people who study charter schools have been worried about,” she said. “There is a lack of accountability. They’re really uneven in terms of quality.” Detractors have historically accused charters of skimming the best students, those whose parents are most committed, from the poorest schools. But supporters of charter schools said the data confirmed earlier research suggesting that charters take on children who were

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already performing below average. “We’re doing so much to help kids that are so much farther behind, and who typically weren’t even continuing in school,” said Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, in Washington, which represents charter schools. She said the results reflect only “a point in time,” and said nothing about the progress of students in charter schools. That, she said, could be measured only by tracking the performance of charters in future tests. For the moment, however, the National Assessment Governing Board has no plans to survey charters again. One previous study, however, suggests that tracking students over time might present findings more favorable to the charter movement. Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who conducted a two-year study of 569 charter schools in 10 states found that while charter school students typically score lower on state tests, over time they progress at faster rates than students in traditional public schools. The new test scores on charter schools went online last November, along with state-by-state results from the national assessment. Though other results were announced at a news conference, with a report highlighting the findings, federal officials never mentioned that the charter school data were publicly available. Researchers at the American Federation of Teachers were able to gain access to the scores from the national assessment’s Web site only indirectly: by gathering results based on how schools identified themselves in response to a question. In a significant departure from earlier releases of test scores, Mr. Lerner said the charter school findings would be formally shown only as part of a larger analysis that would adjust results for the characteristics of charter schools and their students. In the 1990’s, the National Assessment Governing Board had rejected requests from states for such analyses, with Mr. Finn, then a member of the board, contending that explanatory reports would compromise the credibility of the assessment results by trying to blame demographic and other outside factors for poor performance. But Mr. Lerner said he thought such an analysis was necessary to put the charter school test scores in context. He called the raw comparison of test scores “the beginning of something important,” and said, “What one has to do is adjust for many different variables to get a sense of what the effects of charter schools are.”

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Document #10: “Charter vs. non-charter performance,” Education Week, September 1, 2004

This chart compares scores of regular public school students with those of charter school students on the 4th and 8th grade reading and math tests of the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Number Average

Scale Score

% Below Basic

% at or Above Basic

% at or Above

Proficient

% At Advanced

Grade 4 Math

Charter 2,913 228* 33* 67* 25* 2*

Other public

173,849 234 24 76 32 4

Grade 4 Reading

Charter 2,870 210* 45 55 25* 5*

Other public

169,070 217 38 62 30 7

Grade 8 Math

Charter 1,604 271 42* 58* 24 6

Other public 140,121 276 33 67 27 5

Grade 8 Reading

Charter 1,671 259 33 67 29 4

Other public

138,888 261 28 72 30 3

*Statistically significant difference from other public schools.

SOURCE: American Federation of Teachers analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education

Education Secretary Rod Paige took issue with the AFT study. Document #11: Diana Jean Schemo, “Education Secretary defends charter schools,” New York Times, August 18, 2004. The federal secretary of education issued a statement Tuesday saying he stood by charter schools and challenged the conclusion of recent test data that their performance largely trailed that of regular public schools.

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The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, reported in The New York Times on Tuesday, were extracted by researchers at the American Federation of Teachers from reams of data the Education Department released in November without public announcement. It was the first national comparison of test scores between students in charter schools and those in regular public schools. In the statement, Education Secretary Rod Paige took issue with the article. “The Times made no distinction between students falling behind and students climbing out of the hole in which they found themselves,” Mr. Paige said. “It is wrong to think of charter schools as a monolith,” he added. “There are schools for dropouts, schools for students who’ve been expelled, schools serving the most economically disadvantaged families. Charters are as diverse as the children they educate.” Mr. Paige declined to address questions directly. Charters are self-governing public schools, sometimes run by private companies, which operate outside the authority of local school boards. The Bush administration has strongly supported charters, running a special Web site promoting them and earmarking about $220 million for them this year. The data showed that fourth graders at charter schools were about a half year behind students in other public schools in reading and math. Since most children attending charter schools are from poor areas, researchers looked at low-income students in both settings and still found those in charters doing significantly worse. The secretary’s reaction prompted surprise from Darvin Winnick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the national test for the federal government. Mr. Winnick said that while he would interpret the scores with caution, he did not see much cause for arguing with the outcomes themselves. “The data is probably what it is,” Mr. Winnick said. “N.A.E.P. is pretty accurate. There shouldn’t be any question about the results.” Although supporters of the charter school movement came forward with a number of explanations for the data, a second report by SRI International in December confirmed the AFT findings. Document #12: Diana Jean Schemo, “A second report shows charter school students not performing as well as other students,” New York Times, December 16, 2004. A federal Education Department analysis of test scores from 200365 shows that children in

65 Kara Finnigan (University of Rochester), Nancy Adelman (SRI International), Lee Anderson (SRI International), Lynyonne Cotton (St. Mary’s College of California), Mary Beth Donnelly (SRI International) and Tiffany Price (SRI International), Evaluation of the Public Charter Schools Program, Final

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charter schools generally did not perform as well on exams as those in regular public schools. The analysis, released Wednesday, largely confirms an earlier report on the same statistics by the American Federation of Teachers. The department, analyzing the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test for fourth graders, found charter students scoring significantly lower than regular public school students in math, even when the results are broken down for low-income children and those in cities. In reading, the report said, over all there was no statistically significant difference between students in charters and in regular public schools. However, when students in special education were excluded, charter students scored significantly lower than those in regular public schools. When broken down by race, the results show charter students generally lagging behind those in regular public schools in reading and math, but the differences were not statistically significant, the report said. The report, which included responses to a questionnaire administered with the test, shed light on the nature of charter schools and their performance. They showed, for example, that the only charter schools that outperformed regular public schools in reading were those that had been in operation for less than a year. Otherwise, test scores generally declined the longer a school had been operating as a charter. Also, schools that were not chartered by a school district but functioned as independent districts tended to do worse than those over which districts exercised some oversight. The data were released at an unusual news conference, at which the deputy education secretary, Eugene W. Hickok, who is resigning, pronounced the Education Department a defender of charter schools and described the results as encouraging. “In case there’s any doubt, we are big supporters of charter schools,” Dr. Hickok said. “So as I read these studies on charter schools, I read them through that lens.” He noted that in specific areas, charter students did not do significantly worse than those in regular schools, and said the results portrayed only a “snapshot in time,” not a measure of growth. He noted that charters tended to enroll more minority students, and were disproportionately located in cities. Given those differences, he said, the scores were “not a bad sign.” He added, “While the study does point out some differences, it also points out that in many ways charter students are holding their own.” After the release of the report, the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees

Report (Washington, D.C.: SRI International, prepared for the Policy and Program Studies Service, U.S. Department of Education, 2004). Available at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/pcsp-final/finalreport.pdf

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the test, sponsored a discussion with Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, which supports charters, and Bella Rosenberg, an author of the teachers’ union report. That report, released in August and based on the same test scores released Wednesday, prompted a storm of criticism from charter advocates. Ms. Allen, citing studies that purport to show stronger results for charters in comparisons that are statewide, rather than national, said, “Charter school students in the aggregate are in a dead heat with students in regular schools.” She also rejected the survey questions that found that charters with district supervision performed better than those without. “Autonomy is not accurately measured by asking are you part of a school district or not,” she said. “It does not take into account the wide variety of ways” in which charters operate, she said. Ms. Rosenberg differed. “If our much-maligned regular public schools are failing,” she said, “then charter schools, the very schools that promised to deliver higher achievement in return for, and as a result of, freedom from rules and regulations, are failing too, and often at significantly worse levels.” In a statement, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Work Force, described the new report as a refutation of the teachers’ union report, although the results were largely the same. He highlighted findings showing that in comparing students of the same race, charter students were not doing significantly worse than students in regular schools. But Ms. Rosenberg rejected that analysis, borrowing a line from President Bush in calling it “a standard of success otherwise known as the soft bigotry of low expectations.” “We don’t tolerate that from regular public schools,” she said, “and we certainly shouldn’t tolerate it from a movement whose schools flourished because it promised elected representatives—and more poignantly, poor and minority parents—that charter schools could and would do better, not the same or worse.” For the first time, the survey also collected national data comparing the performance of students in charters managed by nonprofit organizations with those run by commercial companies, the largest of which is Edison Schools. Those results showed no difference in performance between the two types of schools. Adam Tucker, a spokesman for Edison, said that while the quality of companies that managed charter schools varied widely, he doubted the survey’s findings. He cited a study by the Brookings Institution, which found that schools run by commercial companies did somewhat better than other charter schools.

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A year later three scholars at the Economic Policy Institute took a more careful look at what they called the “charter school dust-up.”

Document #13: Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein,66 The Charter School Dust-Up: Examining the Evidence on Enrollment and Achievement (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2005)

Introduction and summary

In the summer of 2004, a noisy controversy erupted over whether charter schools are more effective than regular public schools. The dust-up began when the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), known to support greater restrictions on charter schools, published test results from the federal government’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The data showed that average achievement is higher in regular public schools than in charter schools, both for students overall and for low-income students. The AFT’s report also noted that for black students, a group that many charter schools are specifically designed to serve, average achievement is no better in charter schools than in regular public schools.

The New York Times publicized this finding on its front-page. Immediately, the most zealous advocates of charter schools responded with a storm of criticism, including a full-page advertisement that they placed in the Times itself. These advocates did not deny that average test scores were higher in regular public schools than in charter schools. Rather, they claimed that the AFT report was methodologically flawed because it did not attempt to compare subsets of students who were truly similar in background and prior achievement. In particular, these advocates claimed that students attending charter schools are more disadvantaged than students attending regular public schools, and especially that black students in charter schools are more disadvantaged than black students in other public schools. If this were the case, then charter school students could have been expected to score lower than regular public school students even if charter schools were somewhat more effective. These charter school advocates claimed that charter schools are actually, on average, more effective, not less so, than regular public schools.

The controversy revealed an intense level of disagreement about the wisdom of policies to encourage charter schools. That the claims are so contradictory indicates how little consensus there is about:

• whether charter schools really are more effective than public schools;

• whether charter schools really do serve comparatively disadvantaged students;

• what kind of evidence is required to make judgments about the impact of charter schools on student learning; and

66 Martin Carnoy is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and professor of education and economics at Stanford University. Rebecca Jacobsen is a research assistant of the Economic Policy Institute, a graduate student in politics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and formerly a teacher in New York City and Connecticut public schools. Lawrence Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute and director of its education research and policy program. Richard Rothstein is a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute and a visiting professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.

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• what role charter schools can be expected to play in strategies to improve regular public schools.

Our aim in this book is to synthesize as comprehensively as possible all available evidence on the average effectiveness of charter schools relative to regular public schools. We conclude in Chapter 5 that, based on 19 studies, conducted in 11 states and the District of Columbia, there is no evidence that, on average, charter schools out-perform regular public schools. In fact, there is evidence that the average impact of charter schools is negative. This evidence of a negative effect comes particularly from those studies that use the strongest methodologies to discover causal effects, although the evidence of a negative effect is somewhat localized to specific states. In pursuing this aim, it was essential that we first set standards for methodological quality. Children are not assigned at random to attend charter schools, so some attempt must be made to identify subsets of children attending charter and regular public schools who are as similar as possible in their prior characteristics, including academic achievement. Fairly clear standards for this kind of work have emerged in social science, and we describe these in Chapter 4. We also ask whether studies adhering more or less well to these standards produce similar or different results. With few exceptions, the general outlines of the story are similar: charter schools are no more effective than regular public schools on average and may, in fact, be less effective. But do charter schools serve more disadvantaged students than those served by regular public schools? The answer to this question is somewhat complex. In many states, the fraction of charter school students who are black is somewhat higher than the fraction of regular public school students who are black. However, the black students attending charter schools in these states tend to be disproportionately better off socioeconomically than black students attending regular public schools. The best studies of charter school effectiveness simultaneously remove the effects not only of race and socioeconomic factors but also of prior achievement and even a host of other, often unobservable differences (such as the educational levels of parents) between children attending the two types of schools. In these highest-quality studies in particular, the average effects of attending a charter school are null or negative. In Chapter 4 we compare, in detail, the kinds of students served by charter and regular public schools nationally and in studies done in 12 states and the District of Columbia. Beyond synthesizing current evidence, our inquiry also explores a few of the policy implications of our findings about relative average charter school performance, and this requires us to re-evaluate some of the common rationales for supporting charter schools. One argument is that charter schools liberate educators from bureaucratic regulations and union contracts that stifle creative educational improvements. We speculate that, while deregulation helps some educators devise good schools, it also enables others to devise bad and even corruptly managed schools. For example, while some charter schools can use freedom from normal certification requirements to hire unusually talented and dedicated teachers, other charter schools use this freedom to hire teachers who may be less qualified than teachers in regular public schools. We conclude that the evidence about average charter school performance is consistent with this wide range in the effects of

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deregulation. That charter schools are not substantially more effective, on average, than other public schools calls into question the view that bureaucracy and union contracts are major impediments to school improvement. It seems, based on the evidence, that deregulation and deunionization do not yield any bonanzas of learning, on average. If bonanzas are realized in some places, they are apparently offset by catastrophes in others. A second argument is that charter schools are more accountable than regular public schools for their outcomes. This theory takes two forms. Some advocates of charter schools argue that, unlike regular public schools, charter schools will be closed by public authorities if their academic performance is inadequate. We show that evidence about actual charter school accountability processes does not support this assertion. Other advocates of charter schools argue that parental choice (the freedom of parents to choose better charter schools and to remove their children from low-performing ones) provides strong accountability. We suggest that to the extent charter schools rely on this mechanism of accountability, it should not be surprising that their average academic performance does not surpass that of regular public schools, for two reasons. First, parents may choose charter schools for other than academic reasons. Second, given how complex it is to assess academic performance (leading even experts to dispute the effectiveness of charter schools so vigorously), it is not surprising that parents would not always be able to discern a charter school that was more academically effective. A third argument is that charter schools foster experimentation to see if novel educational approaches can produce good results. We do not deny that this is an important rationale for charter schools. But we note that, in any field, a spirit of experimentation is likely to produce many failures before (if ever) identifying successes. Researchers devise strategies for widespread experimentation to discover effective practices, not to produce average gains in outcomes—those may come later, when the policies identified as effective are implemented on a large scale. Charter schools might be successful in generating innovations that should be imitated, even if average charter school test scores are at or below those of regular public schools. This implies different criteria for evaluating the merits of charter schools than the claim—that average charter school test scores surely must be superior—advanced by those zealous charter school advocates who were most vociferous in attacking the AFT report. Finally, a fourth argument is that competition from charter schools improves outcomes in regular public schools because educators in regular public schools are motivated to be more effective in order to avoid losing students to charter schools. This argument for charter schools, even if valid, would not require average charter school performance to be superior to that of regular public schools. Nonetheless, we find no evidence to support the claim of a positive competition effect of charter schools, although research in this area is not yet extensive. A potentially encouraging result from the charter school dust-up of 2004 is that the policy community may now be better able to reach consensus on what standards are appropriate for judging evidence of educational effectiveness, not only of charter schools but of regular public schools in the nation, in states, and in districts. In particular, we note that many charter school advocates criticized the AFT report for failing to (or being unable to, given

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data limitations) properly adjust for student background characteristics and prior test scores when evaluating charter schools. We agree with this critique. But we observe that some charter school advocates who were most vigorous in putting forward this critique have themselves been among the most outspoken opponents of making such adjustments when evaluating regular public schools and when comparing the educational effectiveness of states, schools, districts, and teachers. The dramatic change in the methodological standards of this group…, revealed in responses to the AFT report, can increase the prospects for a more objective and fair review of public policy issues in education than we have experienced in the past. But this movement toward high methodological standards will succeed only if policy researchers apply them consistently, instead of adopting tough methodological standards only when convenient to support ideological positions. In particular, we urge that the standards set forth in the New York Times advertisement, placed by zealous charter school advocates in opposition to the AFT report (and reproduced in Chapter 1), be applied not only to charter school evaluation but to all school accountability policies at the federal and state levels, including those employed by the No Child Left Behind legislation. In this book, we use two terms whose frequent repetition may be irritating to some readers. We apologize in advance for this irritation, but find it necessary nonetheless to use the terms. First, we often refer to the group of charter school advocates who have been most outspoken in their insistence that, regardless of good data, charter school performance must be superior to that of regular public schools. As one of the principal spokespersons for this group, Chester E. Finn Jr., described his and his colleagues’ reaction to the AFT report: “Charter supporters rushed to the barricades after last week’s AFT-coordinated blast in the New York Times.” For want of a better term, we call this group of barricade-rushers “charter school zealots.” We intend no disrespect to this group, and use “zealot” as Webster’s dictionary defines it: “someone who acts for a cause with excessive zeal (persistent, fervent devotion).” It is necessary to use a term for members of this group to distinguish them from many other supporters of charter schools whose devotion to charter schools is not excessive and who did not rush to the barricades following the release of the AFT’s report. Supporters of charter schools may have many reasons for their support, and these reasons do not require an a priori belief that average charter school academic performance must be superior to that of regular public schools. These reasons might include beliefs that charter schools are a way to keep parents committed to public education by offering them more choice, a way to work around some or all of the administrative and union constraints that characterize many regular public schools, a way to keep some children in school who might otherwise be “lost,” or a way to involve parents more actively in decisions about their children’s education. It is not the purpose of this book to evaluate in any depth the merits of these reasons for supporting charter schools or to propose policies regarding charter schools. We do, however, observe that any policy that permits parents to choose schools other than their neighborhood schools can involve costs as well as benefits, and that the difficult trade-offs involved in school choice have been too little discussed. For example, we note that if more academically able children exit their regular public schools in favor of charter schools (or, in the regular public sector, in favor of magnet or exam schools), this makes the task of neighborhood public schools more difficult because the students who remain will, on

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average, be less academically able and will lose the benefit of interaction with their more academically able peers. We also note that some evidence indicates that the existence of charter schools increases racial segregation in public schooling. These are not reasons to reject charter schooling, but policy deliberations must weigh these against the benefits claimed by charter school supporters. There are also zealots who oppose charter schools. In this book, we aim to be fair and accurate, but we do not attempt to achieve an artificial “balance” by analyzing the zealotry of charter school opponents as well. Charter school zealots, for example, accuse the AFT of opposing charter schools at least partly because they threaten the union’s institutional interests. In examining the accuracy of the data analysis of NAEP charter school scores presented by the AFT, we do not find a need to examine the interests that may have motivated the AFT to perform this accurate analysis. Militant and unreflective charter school opposition, by the AFT or other influential policy makers, was not prominent in the dustup following the AFT’s report, and it is this controversy, and only this controversy, whose implications this book examines. The other term we use repetitively is “on average” to describe data about charter and regular public schools. Without such a term, many readers may still appreciate that when data comparisons of charter and regular public schools are made, only averages are being described—there can be wide variation of achievement within a particular school (whether it is a charter or a regular public school), and there can be wide variation in the average achievement of schools that are charter schools and of schools that are regular public schools. But some readers may benefit from a reminder that a conclusion that charter school performance lags behind that of regular public school performance is not inconsistent with an observation that many charter schools may be far superior to typical regular public schools (and some may be greatly inferior). Or, typical charter schools may be superior to many regular public schools. Unfortunately, good data on school performance are so limited that we have almost no understanding of the variance of mean charter school academic achievement or of the variance of mean regular public school achievement. NAEP could not report such data, because NAEP reports test scores only of students, not of individual schools. And the state studies we examine, although they collect data on school mean performance levels, do not report standard deviations of these school means of performance, a statistic that would be needed to understand the extent to which average performance in charter schools is typical for charter schools generally. Because this is such a critical point, we keep it before the reader by frequently inserting the words “on average” in our discussion. The co-authors of this book are not opponents, zealous or otherwise, of charter schools; among ourselves, we have a variety of ways in which we balance the costs and benefits of charter schools. The message of this book is not that charter schools have “failed,” but only that there is no reason to be surprised that their average performance apparently falls below that of regular public schools. We believe that a more reasoned discussion of education policy can proceed from this recognition.

• • •

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The 2007 NAEP results for charter and non-charter schools mirrored those of four years earlier, though they received considerably less publicity. In part this was the result of greater sophistication in analyzing the results. Document #14: Erik W. Robelen, “NAEP Gap Continuing for Charters: Sector’s Scores Lag in Three Out of Four Main Categories,” Education Week, May 21, 2008. Nearly four years after a front-page story in The New York Times sparked a fierce debate by suggesting that charter school students nationally were lagging academically behind their peers in regular public schools, the national testing program that informed the controversy has generated far more data for researchers and advocates to scrutinize. Yet the more recent findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress have garnered much less attention and analysis than the 2003 results. The picture that emerges from the growing data set appears mixed for charter schools. While many analysts urge caution in using NAEP to judge the 4,300-school charter sector, the latest data do not bolster the early hopes of charter advocates that the sector as a whole would significantly outperform regular public schools. The overall scores of charter students tested in 2007 in the nationally representative assessment program were lower than for students in regular public schools in 4th grade reading and mathematics, and in 8th grade math, all by statistically significant margins. In 4th grade reading, charter students had an average score of 214, compared with 220 for regular public schools, on a 500-point scale. Looked at another way, 59 percent of charter students scored at or above the “basic” reading level on the NAEP test, compared with 66 percent in other public schools. But in 8th grade reading, charter students appeared to essentially close a gap from 2005, with charter and regular public school students scoring about the same in 2007. Digging deeper in the data reveals a more complex story, though limited sample sizes for charter schools make many score differences hard to interpret with confidence. For low-income black students—a key population served by many urban charters—the 2007 performance gaps between charter and non-charter schools generally appeared smaller than those between the two sectors’ populations as a whole, and none was large enough to be deemed statistically significant. Hispanic charter students, meanwhile, appeared to do about as well as or better than their peers in regular public schools across grades and subjects. But here, too, limited sample sizes make the differences too small to state with confidence.

Piece of the Puzzle Researchers emphasize that because of NAEP’s design, the program has serious limitations in assessing charter schools, or comparing them with other public schools. Some experts argue that the tests are altogether ill-suited for the purpose.

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The congressionally mandated NAEP—known as “the nation’s report card”—provides a snapshot of performance at a single point in time, testing different students each cycle. It also does not take into account prior achievement. Even with those and other caveats, some researchers—though not all—suggest the results are a useful part of the growing research base on charter achievement… The Charter Sample The NAEP sample of charter students is designed to be nationally representative, but is dwarfed by the number of students tested in regular public schools. Recent samples have ranged from 2,300 to 3,300 charter students for each grade level in reading, and from 150 to more than 200 schools. By contrast, in 2007, the national public school sample in 4th grade reading included 183,400 students from 7,310 schools, with somewhat lower 8th grade figures. The population that charter schools typically serve is substantially different from that served by public schools as a whole, complicating comparisons across school types. In 2007, the NAEP charter sample had more than twice as many black students on a percentage basis and far more students living in cities—groups that generally score below national averages—than did the pool of NAEP test-takers overall. And the charter population itself is changing, the test samples suggest. For example, 53 percent of charter students tested in 4th grade math in 2007 were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, up from 42 percent in 2003. With three rounds of reading and math scores for 4th grade charter students, the NAEP results have not shown clear trends. In reading, charter students’ scores apparently rose in 2005 but dropped slightly in 2007; the changes were not large enough, however, to be statistically significant. With 4th graders in regular public schools posting reading gains in 2007, the charter students slipped behind them. In 4th grade math, charter students have shown what appear to be steady gains from 2003 to 2007—again, not statistically significant—but made little headway in closing the gap with students in regular public schools, who saw a similar growth trend. Looking at students by race and income status, as measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price lunches, seems to alter the picture. In 4th grade math, charter students overall were 5 points behind non-charter students in both 2005 and 2007 on the 500-point scale, statistically significant differences. But for low-income black students, the difference between those in charter schools and those in regular public schools was 1 point in 2005 and 2 points in 2007, neither of which was statistically significant. Measured another way, 56 percent of low-income black

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students from charter schools scored at the basic level or above in 2007, compared with 59 percent of such students in regular public schools. “Certainly, the raw data suggest charter students are behind,” said Sarah Theule Lubienski, an associate professor of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, after reviewing the recent results for 4th grade students in math and reading. But she said that when controlling for race and low-income status, it appears that “neither one is ahead.” In a press release last September, the national charter alliance highlighted the gains of 8th grade charter students in 2007, though those apparent increases were not deemed statistically significant. The average scale score rose from 255 in 2005 to 260 in 2007 in reading, and from 268 to 273 in math. Growth Rates Differ?

The alliance concluded that charter students’ achievement “increased at a notably faster rate” than that of their peers in regular public schools. It also noted stronger 8th grade gains in certain categories, such as the reading scores for African-American and low-income students. The charter alliance also noted the performance of Hispanic charter students. In 8th grade math, their average score was 9 points higher than for Hispanics in regular public schools in 2005, and 8 points higher in 2007. Because of the limited charter sample size, though, the differences were not deemed statistically significant. For its part, the AFT has been quiet about the recent NAEP data. Asked about the results, union spokesman Dan Murphy said: “Basically, what the NAEP data suggests is what we already know. There are some excellent charter schools and some charter schools that fall short. … And the same goes for regular public schools.”

• • •

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And so to the case at hand. Background information on Washington, D.C. and its public schools

Population:67

Population (2006) 581,530

Ethnic composition:

White 34.5%

African American 55.4

Hispanic (of any race) 8.2

Asian American 3.4

Native American 0.3

Other 6.3

Median household income (2006) $51,847

History68

The idea of a national capital city seems to have originated at a meeting of the Congress in June 1783 in the Old City Hall in Philadelphia. The War of Independence had but recently been concluded; the treasury was empty; the nation had no credit; and it was heavily in debt to its soldiers for back pay. There was no president, and, though the 13 colonies were free, they remained a gathering of semi-independent sovereignties with divergent interests. On June 20 a large body of unpaid soldiers invaded Philadelphia to present their grievances to Congress. Conception, siting, and design No actual violence occurred, but a number of congressmen started a movement to establish a federal city where the lawmakers could conduct the business of government without fear of intimidation. Several locations were considered over the next six years, but Northern and Southern disagreements prevented decision until 1790. Although the decision to locate the capital on the Potomac was largely a political compromise, selection of the exact site for the city was left to the newly elected president, George Washington. The chosen district, or territory as it was first called, was 10 miles

67 U.S. Census Bureau, American Fact Finder (http://factfinder.census.gov) 68 Encyclopedia Britannica 2003, “Washington, D.C.”

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square. Georgetown to the north and Alexandria to the south were both in the original district, while a third village, Hamburg, lay by the riverfront swamps in a part of Washington known traditionally as Foggy Bottom. Important to Washington in his selection was the site’s commercial potential. The river was navigable to Georgetown, an important tobacco market. The construction of a canal from there across the Cumberland Gap to the “western frontier” would tap the produce of the vast country beyond that was being opened to settlement. The president had established a private canal construction company before the final decision had been reached, but he immediately relinquished his interests in it. While in Philadelphia, Washington negotiated with Pierre-Charles L’Enfant to lay out a plan for the new city. A volunteer in the Revolution whose democratic idealism was unquestioned, a well-trained engineer, and an artist who had designed the setting for the president’s inaugural ceremonies in New York City, L’Enfant was highly respected and admired. Apparently sensing the historic significance of his appointment, he conceived his plan on a grand scale. The Capitol’s cornerstone was laid by Washington in September 1793, and construction was begun on the White House, designed by an Irishman, James Hoban, and on a modest cluster of nearby office buildings to house governmental departments. In October 1800 the archives, general offices, and officials of the government were moved to Washington from Philadelphia. President John Adams took up residence in the White House, and the Congress met for the first time in the newly completed Senate wing of the Capitol. The young city Descriptions of life in early Washington reveal many of the shortcomings resulting from establishment of a capital city by fiat amid what was essentially a wilderness. What was conceived as a “city of magnificent distances” or, in Washington’s words, “the Emporium of the West” was referred to by various statesmen and congressmen as “wilderness city,” “Capital of Miserable Huts,” “A Mud-hole Equal to the Great Serbonian Bog,” and similar epithets. By the close of Thomas Jefferson’s term of office in 1808, the population was scarcely 5,000. Until the introduction of the steam engine and the telegraph, a more or less continuous agitation went on in Congress and in the national press to move the capital because of its remoteness and inaccessibility. In 1814 the capital was temporarily abandoned as the result of the invasion by a British force under Admiral Sir George Cockburn, who ordered the burning of the Capitol, the White House, and the Navy Arsenal. Although this action was rather inconsequential to the outcome of the War of 1812, it had the effect of solidifying Washington in the minds of many Americans as the national capital. Public indignation over destruction of the seat of government ended all significant movements to relocate the federal city, and Washington became the national capital in fact as well as in name. By the outbreak of the Civil War, the intensity of this image was firmly established. The course of that conflict was deeply affected by the actions of the federal government to defend Washington at all costs from nearby Confederate forces, who often threatened the city from several sides. If

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the Civil War was the final stage of the historical process that changed a loose confederation of states into a united republic, it was also effective in completing the identity of Washington as the capital of the United States. Evolution of the modern city Originally, the city of Washington and the District of Columbia were not coextensive, either geographically or administratively. The 10-mile-square District was reduced by about one-third in 1847 by the return of the land south of the Potomac to the state of Virginia. Alexandria city resumed its former independent existence, while Arlington county was created from the remainder. Self-governing bodies within the District existed until 1895, when Georgetown was annexed by Washington. During and after the Civil War, the District’s population more than doubled within a few years, suddenly including 40,000 freed slaves, who set a pattern of racial diversity that was to have a major impact on the city’s life. The following century was filled also with physical and demographic growth and change within the city, with numerous political modifications attempting to harmonize the District’s needs with its inherent status in relation to Congress, and with continuing activities to refine the cultural and monumental image of the city. By the latter third of the 19th century, the city had constructed an impressive number of monuments, but then and later many slums began to intrude on the city’s image. Transformation of this and other problems was cut short by World Wars I and II but carried on after their conclusions. During the 1930s thousands of workers moved to Washington to build the Supreme Court and office buildings such as those in the Federal Triangle. During World War II the city’s population exploded, reaching about 950,000. National Airport and the Pentagon opened in 1941, the latter catering to 40,000 office and military personnel. An exodus of the middle class, both white and black, from the city began after the war. Many Washington neighbourhoods were swept away and replaced by huge, impersonal new federal agency buildings, and public housing complexes were erected in poor areas. However, communities across the city were partly successful in arresting highway construction through older neighborhoods. In the 1960s an interest in historic preservation was reawakened, although race riots sowed fear and neglect in many neighbourhoods. A real-estate boom in the 1980s revitalized many deteriorating areas, particularly the downtown, where urban life was brought full circle. Gentrification has proceeded since then. In the early 21st century Washington continued to struggle against crime and poverty, but its troubles were commensurate with those of other major urban centres, and for many residents the city’s cultural and economic benefits outweighed the negative aspects of urban life.

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Economy: Few cities in the United States are so dominated by the nature of their economic base as is Washington. Only two major economic activities provide virtually all of the income to the city and its residents. The federal civil service is by far the largest single employer in the metropolitan area. Tourism, which includes its retail trade and related services, is second in economic importance. Manufacturing and other commercial activities occupy only a minor place in the economic structure. Government and Politics: The city of Washington, as the site of the nation’s capital, has evolved a governmental structure that is unique among U.S. cities. The first government of the city of Washington, established in 1802, comprised a mayor appointed by the president of the United States and a city council elected by the people. The city’s charter was amended in 1812 to provide for an elected board of aldermen, which, along with the council, elected the mayor. In 1820 Congress permitted the residents to elect both mayor and council. Since Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution empowers Congress to exercise exclusive legislation over the seat of government, however, the powers of the mayor and the council were limited, and their administration of the city was generally ineffectual. In 1871 Congress created a territorial form of government for the District. The officials, all appointed by the president, included a governor, a board of public works, and a legislative assembly comprising an 11-member Council and a 22-member House of Delegates. In addition, the District was permitted a popularly elected, nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. This arrangement was abandoned after only three years following a series of financial crises that aroused opposition among both politicians and taxpayers. Congress resumed direct control of the city, providing administration by three commissioners appointed by the president. No provision was made for the franchise under the commissioner form of government, and residents of the District were denied all rights to vote until 1961. The 23rd Amendment to the Constitution then allowed qualified voters to vote in presidential elections but failed to permit participation in elections for local officials, all of whom continued to be appointed. The issue of home rule for the residents of the District became increasingly prominent in the 1960s, and it was not unrelated to the general struggle for civil rights that characterized the nation as a whole. The most serious criticism of the commissioner form of government was that all legislation affecting it had to be passed by Congress: the House District of Columbia Committee and the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee were required to initiate all legislation pertaining to the District. Since the members of these committees were not permanent residents of Washington and represented constituencies that had little or no interest in the problems of the city, the responsiveness of Congress was felt by many to be slow or entirely lacking. Efforts on the part of various local groups over the years to achieve some degree of home rule were consistently blocked by the

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House committee, although the Senate committee passed five such bills between 1951 and 1963. It was often pointed out that the committees tended to be dominated by Southern congressmen who resisted efforts to give the franchise and other powers to the District because of its increasing black majority. In 1967 Congress reorganized the District’s government, abolishing the three-commissioner system and creating in its place a single commissioner (who assumed the title of mayor), an assistant commissioner, and a nine-member city council, all appointed by the president. The city council was given authority to exercise certain legislative and regulatory powers once vested in the three commissioners, but such actions were subject to the veto of the mayor. In 1970 Congress created again the position of a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives, elected by residents of the District. Movement toward home rule has continued. In 1973, under President Nixon, the limited Home Rule Act of 1964 was amended, providing for the popular election every four years of the mayor and city council members. In addition, the city council was expanded to 13 members. The mayor was given broader reorganizational and appointive authority. The city council was empowered to establish and set tax rates and fees, make changes in the budget, and organize or abolish any agency of government of the District. Congress, in turn, reserved the power to veto any actions of the District government that threaten the “federal interest.” Thus, while the District has a recognizable municipal form of government, Congress continues to treat it in some respects as a branch of the federal government. The city’s “district attorney” is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, appointed by the president. The budget, passed by the city council and approved by the mayor, is reviewed and enacted by Congress. Moreover, Congress retains the right to enact legislation on any subject for the District, whether within or outside of the scope of power delegated to the city council. Administration of municipal services As under previous forms of government, municipal functions remain in control of a combination of local and federal committees. School-board members, formerly appointed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, became popularly elected in 1968. Public utilities are under a Public Service Commission appointed by the president. The zoning of private property is handled by the Zoning Commission, consisting of the mayor, the chairman of the city council, the Architect of the Capitol, and the director of the National Park Service. The water supply is under the jurisdiction of an Army engineer, given the title of District Engineer, but its distribution is controlled by the mayor. The National Park Service supervises the public parks of the city. Public security and law enforcement are handled by four separate law-enforcement agencies, each with its own jurisdictional area. Under the mayor is the Metropolitan Police Force, which has the responsibility for enforcing the laws and ordinances of the municipal government. The Capitol Police are responsible for the security of the Capitol building and its grounds. The White House Security Guard protects the White House and the president, while the National Park Police are responsible for all public parks and many recreational facilities.

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The District Council.69

The Council of the District of Columbia is the legislative branch of the District government. All legislative powers are vested in the Council. In addition, the council approves the District’s annual budget and financial plan, and sets the revenue required to fund the budget. It oversees the programs and operations of government agencies, and acts on or initiates reorganization plans for the Executive Branch. The Council determines land use, through the adoption of the comprehensive plan, and undertakes redistricting based on the decennial census. In addition, the Council appoints members to certain boards and commissions, and must confirm major appointments made by the Mayor.

The Council develops legislative initiatives and budget priorities to promote the public welfare. It oversees the performance of government agencies and the implementation of management reforms to improve service delivery. Council committees issue analytical reports on the effectiveness of government operations and make recommendations for reform. In addition, the Council monitors agency spending to ensure compliance with the approved budget and financial plan.

As the local elected representative body, the Council seeks citizen participation throughout the legislative process. It holds public hearings to provide an opportunity for public comment on proposed legislation, policy initiatives and government operations. Also, the Council helps citizens access government information and services.

Organizational Structure

The Council is composed of 13 Members—a representative elected from each of the eight wards and five members, including the Chairman, elected at-large. The Council conducts its work through standing committees and special committees established as needed. Council staff perform legislative research, bill drafting, program and policy analysis, and constituent services. In addition, the Council is supported by centralized administrative, legal and budget offices.

To assist in its oversight, the Council appoints the D.C. Auditor who conducts statutorily required audits of government accounts and operation, and other audits as directed by the Council.

Council Committees.

Much of the work of the Council is done in standing committees and special committees. Committees are established at the first meeting of each Council period. The Committees are as follows: Committee of the Whole, Committee on Government Operations, Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Committee on Health, Committee on Economic Development, Committee on Human Services, Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Finance and Revenue, and Committee on Public Works and the Environment.

69 http://www.dccouncil.washington.dc.us/

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Exhibit #5: School system statistics70

Student population (2005-06) 59,616 Ethnic composition: White 4.6% African American 84.4 Hispanic 9.4 Asian American 1.6 Other 0.5 School budget (2004-05) $ 1,085,658 Per student expenditure $18,521 Sources of school funding: Federal 15% Local 85 Teachers 5,005 Teacher to student ratio 1:11.9

70 Information on district finance from U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics, Common Core of Data (http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/search.asp) Information on student demographics from District of Columbia Public Schools (http://www.k12.dc.us/dcps/offices/facts1.html#4).

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Exhibit #6: Washington, D.C. School Governance

Congress of the United States

Board of Education(11 members: President

elected at-large, 4 members elected by district, 4 members appointed by the mayor, and 2

student representatives)

ChancellorMichelle Rhee

(Appointed by Mayor)

Regional Instructional Superintendents

168 Schools and Special Programs (including 71 charter schools)

Mayor

Adrien Fenty (D) (elected 2006)

2 Deputy Chancellors4 Chief Officers

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Exhibit #7: Student performance

National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 2005 Reading Exam:

NAEP 2005 Mathematics Exam:

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Exhibit #8: Timeline of events in Washington, D.C. 1994 (November)

Marion Barry elected mayor (having previously served in that office from 1978-1990 before being convicted on drug charges).

1995 (April)

Congress adopts legislation creating a five-member panel (appointed by the President, approved by Congress) to take over Washington’s city government. The District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority is commonly referred to as the “Control Board.”

1995 (Spring)

The House of Representatives replaces its District of Columbia Committee with a less powerful Appropriations Subcommittee on District Affairs. The GOP-controlled House also strips the District’s delegate of the power to cast votes in the “Committee of the Whole.” Congress authorizes the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995, authorizing charter schools in the district. The act provides for a District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, which, along with the District Board of Education, can each authorize up to 20 charters per year.

1996 (November)

Control Board seizes control of the District of Columbia school system, reducing the eleven-member elected school board to advisory status, appointing a nine-member DC Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees, firing Franklin L. Smith, and hiring Julius W. Becton, Jr., a retired three-star general, in his place.

1997 (August)

Clinton signs Revitalization Act, extending the authority of the Control Board over city finance and management.

1998 Arlene Ackerman succeeds Becton as superintendent.

1998 (November)

Anthony Williams, Chief Financial Officer under the Control Board, is elected mayor. The Control Board turns over day-to-day operations of the city to the new mayor, retaining a veto power over major decisions.

2000 Paul Vance succeeds Ackerman as superintendent.

2000 (June)

A ballot initiative restores authority to the Board of Education, now made up of five elected members and four members appointed by the mayor.

2001 (September)

The Control Board dissolves itself.

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2003 (July)

At the Bush administration’s instigation, Congress includes the “D.C. Parental Choice Incentive Act of 2003” in the 2004 Federal budget. The measure would give federal grants of up to $7,500 a year to Washington families earning up to 180 percent of the poverty level or about $27,500 for a family of three. Families could use that money to pay tuition at religious or other private schools.

2003 (November)

Paul Vance resigns “in frustration” over (among other things) Mayor Anthony Williams’ support for the federal voucher program. He is replaced by interim superintendent Elfreda Massie.

2004 (January)

Congress approves a $14 million voucher plan for DC providing a $7,500 tuition voucher to permit students to enroll in private schools. It passes only after having been attached to an omnibus spending bill. Mayor Williams supports the program only after Congress adds an additional $26 million in general aid to the district.

2004 (August)

Clifford B. Janey is named superintendent. The third choice of the selection committee, Janey spent most of his career in the Boston Public Schools. More recently, he served as superintendent in Rochester, New York for seven years.

2007 Adrien Fenty is inaugurated as Mayor. Janey is fired as superintendent. Michelle Rhee is hired to fill the new position of chancellor.

2008 Rhee disseminates a plan for reconstituting 26 failing schools in the district.

We begin with a description of the introduction of charter schools into the District of Columbia Schools contained in the senior thesis of Robert Blair, a Brown University student and advisee of mine.. Document #15: Robert Allen Blair, “‘To Fix a Broken City:’ Home Rule and the Origins of School Choice in Washington, D.C.,” Unpublished senior thesis, Education Department, Brown University, April 2006. Chapter 1: “The Charter Schools Movement in D.C. 1995-96.”

That school choice has become such a defining feature of the educational landscape in Washington belies its rather inauspicious origins. This chapter examines those origins and their implications for future debates over educational options in the District. School choice in D.C. began in earnest in 1995 with the movement to create “enterprise,” semi-charter and charter schools. I divide that movement into three stages: first, its birth with Superintendent of Schools Franklin Smith’s “BESST” plan for education reform; second, its adoption by Rep. Newt Gingrich and the Republican leadership in Congress; and third, its near-death during the riotous federal appropriations process of 1995. I focus less on this third stage than on the first two; the lessons embedded in each stage, however, are

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equally important. This is a happy story with an emphatically unhappy ending. Just as the first two stages demonstrate how the home rule system can cultivate a climate of respect between two decidedly incompatible bodies of government, the third confirms how quickly and disastrously that climate can dissipate when Congress loses touch with its own capital city. I. “BESST” As with most education reforms, to peg the charter schools movement in D.C. to a particular moment of origin is an awkward and perhaps impossible task. In the District, however – where hypersensitivity to the young but already sacred right of home rule renders objectionable any policy that even appears to have originated in Congress – the question of provenance is an essential one. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton expressed that sensitivity with characteristic aplomb when she declared at the outset of the charter schools debate that “not one red cent of our appropriation should be taken to experiment with anybody’s ideas on what to do with the District…. That is war.”71 Not surprisingly, she viewed charter schools as just such an experiment. D.C. residents, she complained, were being made “guinea pigs” for Republicans eager to exploit their congressional majority to impose questionable policies on the city. Suspicion towards federal intentions made Norton’s perspective seem, to many, alarmingly accurate. Perhaps charter schools were just one more ideologically conservative design on a vulnerable city. Norton exemplifies one of the more unfortunate byproducts of home rule activism: an impulse to cry foul whenever Congress considers new or unfamiliar policies for the District. The irony, here, is that charter schools were neither new nor unfamiliar. How and from where, then, did the school choice movement in Washington emerge? The answer is two-fold. It arose, in part, from a national trend. Between 1991, when the first charter schools were founded in Minnesota, and 1995, nineteen states had adopted charter schools legislation and, close to home, Maryland and Virginia were considering doing the same. John Golle, chairman of Education Alternatives, Inc., a private, for-profit management firm, noted that by 1994, the “walls” of “built-in resistance” to charter schools from parents, teachers and city and state governments were “starting to come down.”72 In January of 1995, Education Secretary Richard Riley testified before the House Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities that “our children and the education of students of all ages are too important for those of us in Washington to be stuck in the same old way of doing things…. I believe in public school choice, encouraging charter schools and supporting experiments in privatization if local school boards feel that is the right way to go.”73 What had begun as a fad was becoming a national romance with the notion of school choice.

71 Lisa Nevans, “Norton Says GOP Can’t Impose Its Vision on City,” The Washington Times 21 April 1995, final ed.: A1. 72 Mary Jordan, “Private Operation of Public Schools Gains,” The Washington Post 26 January 1994, final ed.: A4. 73 George Archibald, “Riley Rides GOP’s Education Coattails,” The Washington Times 13 January 1995, final ed.: A1.

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But the movement grew, as well, from anxiety over the condition of public schools in the city itself: a system that seemed always on the brink of collapse. In 1995, the Post noted woefully that, in national rankings, “the District is in the top five of any bad category – homicide, infant mortality, dropout rates.”74 In no area of governance was this sense of gloom more pervasive than in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). With an annual education budget of over $500 million, D.C. ranked first among the nation’s 40 largest school districts in per pupil expenditures but last in the metropolitan area on standardized test scores in every category of academic achievement and 49th out of the 50 states plus the District itself on SAT scores and graduation rates. Teachers in the city were among the highest paid in the country, and, with the fourth-lowest student to teacher ratio (14.4 to 1) of any state, class sizes among the smallest.75 The standard argument advanced by the monoliths of the education establishment – notably the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) – that more funding would resolve these perennial problems was becoming less and less compelling: “What [the schools] lack,” declared the Post, “isn’t money.”76 Yet despite what seemed a bounty of funding, the city found itself mired in chronic fiscal distress, ultimately resulting in the creation of a federal financial Control Board to erase a $772 million deficit in D.C.’s $3.2 billion budget. Congress granted the five presidentially-appointed members of the Control Board exhaustive authority over the city’s monetary affairs, including approval of District borrowing, review of all labor contracts and leases and control over virtually all civil services in the city, including the public schools, the police, fire and emergency medical services, public works, housing and community development and procurement.77 In January of 1995, at the behest of the Control Board, Mayor Marion Barry requested $32 million in cuts from the DCPS budget – a request the Board of Education honored, removing 300 teachers and 180 administrators from the payroll and seven days from the school year. In late February, the City Council voted to cut union salaries by 12 percent and non-union salaries by 2 percent and to lay off 1,200 workers. Yet, to the surprise of virtually no one, a General Accounting Office report released that same week announced, “Today the District is insolvent – it does not have enough cash to pay its bills.”78 From this confluence of national enthusiasm for school choice and local malaise emerged Superintendent Franklin Smith’s “BESST” plan – Bringing Educational Services to Students. “BESST” would create between 10 and 15 semi-independent schoolsi operated by Education Alternatives; about 50 “enterprise” schools with the autonomy to control their own budgets, design their own curricula and contract for private services; and several “semi-charter” schools:ii thematic “learning communities” or “schools within schools” organized under the leadership of a select group of teachers or a Fortune 500 company.79 It was, admittedly, a cautious plan, but Smith’s was the first piece of District legislation to 74 “Problems That Money Won’t Solve,” editorial, The Washington Post 13 February 1995, final ed.: A20. 75 James F. Hirni, “”Making the Worst Out of D.C. Schools,” The Washington Times 1 November 1995, final ed.: A17. 76 “Problems That Money Won’t Solve,” A20. 77 Fauntroy, 38-9, 170. 78 George Archibald and Lisa Nevans, “House Envisions New Life for D.C.,” The Washington Times 22 February 1995, final ed.: A1. 79 Jordan, A4.

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contain an explicit reference to charter schools: a moment of genesis for the school choice movement in D.C. Even in a city desperate for reform, the plan proved controversial. Smith unveiled “BESST” in January of 1994, a year when 11 of the combined 26 members of the City Council and Board of Education were up for reelection. That was a fateful mistake. The school board, in particular, greeted Smith’s proposal with a chorus of indignation. Board member Valencia Mohammed, citing the example of nine “disappointing” schools already under the command of Education Alternatives in Baltimore, vowed that she would “do everything to stop” public school privatization. “Smith is not from the District of Columbia, and he doesn’t understand how we’ve been fighting for statehood,” Mohammed explained. “Outside contractors have no concern for the way of life of the District.”80 Board Vice President Wilma Harvey (Ward 1) and members Bernard Gray (Ward 6) and Angie Corley (Ward 5); the leadership of the WTU; and several members of the City Council all agreed with that assessment. Smith dismissed that opposition by assuming a dictatorial posture towards his colleagues: “We might have to sometimes force something on people…. Let them see the gains and benefits.”81 Was school choice, then, nothing more than the pet project of an arrogant superintendent? Perhaps not. Hostility on the Board was far from uniform and seemed to focus not on charter schools, but on the issue of privatization. Mohammed, for one, clarified that beyond privatization, “there’s parts [sic] in the package that I like.”82 In January, meanwhile, the Board had elected Linda Moody – co-founder of the Washington Parent Group Fund and Parents United for D.C. Public Schools, two of the city’s biggest parent organizations – to replace R. David Hall as president, who was retiring after six years at the helm. Moody was unequivocal in her support for Smith’s idea: “The people opposing this don’t understand it,” she said. “People fear change.”83 A Times survey conducted in March of 1994 found the school board “evenly split:” four members in favor, three opposed, three undecided, and one (Gray, who had already voiced his opposition) who could not be reached.84 It was, incidentally, that same block of four – Mohammed, Harvey, Gray and Corley – that also abstained or voted against Moody’s nomination. Smith, when confronted with an ambivalent Board, was quick to compromise. On March 4th, he postponed the privatization proposal. “I did not have the support of my Board to make this happen,” he announced, qualifying that “this does not eliminate the possibility, it just delays the implementation.”85 On March 23rd, his package – which included “enterprise” and “semi-charter” schools run by teachers, but not privatization – passed by a 6 to 5 vote. An impressive 42 of D.C.’s 164 public schools were selected to reorganize

80 Sari Horwitz, “Shaking Up the Schools,” The Washington Post 26 January 1994, final ed.: A1. 81 Maria Koklanaris and Cathryn Donahoe, “Board Split on Privatization” The Washington Times 3 March 1994, final ed.: C6. 82 Koklanaris and Donahoe, C6. 83 Sari Horwitz, “New Schools Chairman Favors Privatization,” The Washington Post 3 February 1994, final ed.: J1. 84 Koklanaris and Donahoe, C6. 85 Maria Koklanaris and Cathryn Donahoe, “Privatizing of Schools Is on Hold” The Washington Times 4 March 1994, final ed.: A1.

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under the plan – 38 as “enterprise” schools, and four as “semi-charters.”86 By September, the number of “semi-charters” had expanded to seven, and the nebulous definitions contained within Smith’s scheme began to materialize into actual programs. On the third floor of its home campus, Truesdell Elementary established a “Nongraded School” of 75 students designed to offer “individualized, hands-on learning in multi-age classes.” Eastern High created a Health and Human Services Academy; H.D. Woodson High, a Business and Finance Institute; Webb Elementary, an African-Centered Education School. Each “school-within-a-school” was appropriated the same $7,171 per pupil budget as traditional D.C. public schools, plus a $5,000 one-time bonus awarded by the school board.87 By the start of the school year in September of 1994, “BESST” had inaugurated a new era of educational options in the city. In the subsequent scuffle over charter schools and vouchers in Congress, “BESST” would disappear more or less entirely from the city’s collective memory. Even one school choice activist who requested anonymity told me that “initially, the impetus [behind charter schools] came from Congress.”88 My analysis is unusual in that it identifies “BESST” as a small but decisive moment in the school choice debate. Small, because it preceded much more radical experiments in reform – not just charter schools, but vouchers as well. Decisive, because it signaled a percolating commitment to educational options in the city months and, in the case of vouchers, years before those reforms became realities. That Congress later adopted the mantle of school choice does not erase the significance of that moment. (Years later, even Norton would fondly cite charter schools as an example of homegrown innovation. So much for fussing over others’ “ideas on what to do with the District.”) Congress shares the credit for constructing the elaborate machinery of educational options that now exists in D.C.; the first cogs,iii however, were set in motion by the city itself. II. A “Spiritual Bond” and “Some Very Bitter Pills” While some detractors viewed Smith’s plan as too drastic a shake-up for an already unstable system, others saw it as timid, even weak. “This is a school within a school; it’s not a charter,” complained Judith Jones of the Committee for Public Autonomous Schools. “It’s a useful first step for the system to have taken, but it’s very limited.”89 For Jones and others, it was Congress that would provide the impetus for a more dramatic and immediate regimen of reform. “I welcome [congressional involvement],” said Mary Jackson, a Ward 7 advisory neighborhood commissioner with four grandchildren in DCPS. “The folks in this city have sat down too long on their hands. This school system stinks. It’s deplorable.”90 That involvement would begin with an unlikely crusader: Georgia Republican and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In December of 1994,

86 David Leonhardt, “42 City Schools Given More Power to Improve,” The Washington Post 16 June 1994, final ed.: J3. 87 Ruth Yodaiken, “Non-Graded School Brings Innovation, Optimism,” The Washington Post 15 September 1994, final ed.: J3. 88 Anonymous. Telephone interview. 17 January 2006. 89 Maria Koklanaris, “Teachers Take Shot to Do It Their Way,” The Washington Times 1 December 1994, final ed.: C5. 90 David A. Vise and Sari Horwitz, “GOP Leaders Seek to Change Face of District,” The Washington Post 12 May 1995, final ed.: A1.

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Gingrich referred vaguely to the wish of congressional Republicans to transform D.C. into an “urban jewel.”91 Although he offered no details, his, Gingrich promised, would be a “transformational, spiritual and volunteeristic approach” to reform.92 What that meant, exactly, was unclear. For a disproportionately Democratic city wary of congressional misadventures in other areas of public policy, such ambiguity (“transformational?” – “volunteeristic?” – “spiritual?”) raised all sorts of ominous possibilities. Yet from the start, Gingrich seems to have been genuinely committed to soliciting local input for his proposals. On February 21st, 1995, he invited Barry, City Council Chairman David Clarke, Norton and Representatives Tom Davis and James Walsh – chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on the District and chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the District, respectively – to a meeting in his office on Capitol Hill. While Gingrich asked the mayor “to swallow some very bitter pills,” including another round of budget cuts, Barry, a frequent and often vociferous critic of Congress, was optimistic. “I think what’s happening here is historic in the sense that the Speaker of the House, Mr. Davis [and] Mr. Walsh want D.C. to be the very best city it can be.”93 When Barry and Gingrich met for a second time the following day, the Post christened them “the oddest couple in American politics.”94 Barry, in what would have been the most bizarre comment of the whole affair had it not so directly echoed earlier statements by Gingrich himself, described their relationship as a “spiritual bond.”95 Was this the same Barry who just five years earlier had decried what he perceived to be a vicious Republican conspiracy to oust him from office? Barry was first elected mayor in 1978; during his first decade in City Hall, nearly a dozen of his top aides were convicted of graft and corruption, among them former deputy mayor for economic development Ibanhoe Donaldson and former deputy mayor for finance Alphonse Hill. Barry suffered from demons of his own, including an apparently insatiable appetite for drugs and women, and two consecutive Republican-appointed attorneys general – Joseph Di Genova and Jay Stephens – made it their mission to prosecute his indiscretions. In 1990, Barry was arrested and indicted on thirteen counts after a bust on the Vista Hotel in D.C. (He was caught with a prostitute, yielding what became his most memorable quote as mayor: “Goddamn bitch set me up.”) To make matters worse, the arrest was filmed, immediately becoming one of “the most widely watched videos in the nation.” After a sixmonth stint in federal prison and a comically brief hiatus in the private sector, Barry returned to City Hall in 1995, his relationship with Congress strained by mutual suspicion, egoism and plain old malice. Michael Fauntroy, like many commentators, identifies Barry’s electoral coup as a key motivation behind the creation of the Control Board.96 And yet, on education reform, he and Gingrich had established a “spiritual bond.” As with Smith’s plan, desperation seemed to inspire in Barry a real excitement for the Speaker’s “quixotic quest:” “Not so long ago,” noted the Post, “Gingrich would have recoiled in hard-right self-righteousness

91 Mary McGrory, “Gingrich’s Capital Ideas,” The Washington Post 23 February 1995, final ed.: A2. 92 Archibald and Nevans, A1. 93 Archibald and Nevans, A1. 94 McGrory, A2. 95 Lisa Nevans, “D.C. Officials Like Gingrich’s Town-Meeting Move,” The Washington Times 19 June 1995, final ed.: A1. 96 Fauntroy, 87-8.

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from the rogue mayor, and…Barry would have swaggered about statehood. But…the town around them is falling apart.” It was, to use Gingrich’s phrase, a “unique moment” for cooperation between two governments once locked in irreconcilable discord.97 The relationship was not, or course, entirely harmonious. Barry insisted that he was uniformly “opposed to vouchers, tax credits, all of that” – several of the key tenets of Gingrich’s plan.98 Gingrich, meanwhile, like Smith, often used language that seemed intended to provoke local ire in articulating his vision for reform. Prone to abrasive military metaphors, he argued that “anything less than the scale of the Normandy invasion will be destined to failure” – an analogy that Ramona Edelin, president of the National Urban Coalition, described as “most unfortunate,” retorting that “many in our city feel an invasion is precisely what is about to occur, and believe me, the French Resistance is comparable to the resistance that invasion will confront.”99 Openly hostile to what he perceived to be obstructionism on the Board of Education, Gingrich declared, “I don’t care about the public school system…. I care about educating children.”100 The leaders of the six member congressional task force he appointed to recommend reforms were no better. One of the six, Georgia Republican Rep. Jack Kingston, went so far as to declare D.C. “the city of the United States of America…. It would be a grave mistake to say it is [the residents’] city.”101 Understandably, those residents were furious. With home rule concerns looming large over all political discourse, Washington is home to a famous brand of territorialism. Gingrich failed to recognize that honoring the principle of home rule is often a matter of satisfying big, voracious egos. One ego was Mohammed, who dubbed the task force a “slap in the face” to D.C. residents. “They have denied us our inalienable, democratic rights to represent ourselves.” Another was councilmember Hilda Mason, who complained, “They haven't talked to me, and I chair the committee on education and libraries…. I believe in democracy. This isn’t very democratic.”102 Another – perhaps the most implacable of them all – was Norton. She claimed to have learned about Gingrich’s task force from the newspaper. “And that,” she said, “is . . . morally wrong and totally unacceptable.”103 Stoking her outrage, congressional Republicans decided not to risk navigating their bill through the D.C. subcommittee in the House, of which Norton was a member, but rather to attach it in pieces to the city’s annual federal appropriation. In a fiery letter to Gingrich, Norton wrote, “No matter how well-meaning, innovative or potentially successful, policies that do not result from mutual action and consent are bitterly resented by District officials.”104 On a more personal and arguably vainglorious note, she continued, “I take seriously that members of Congress

97 McGrory, A2. 98 George Archibald, “Mayor Supports Exemption from Federal Income Taxes,” The Washington Times 31 March 1995, final ed.: A1. 99 David A. Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” The Washington Post 9 June 1995, final ed.: D3. 100 McGrory, A2. 101 Howard Schneider and David A. Vise, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” The Washington Post 2 August 1995, final ed.: D1. 102 Vise and Horwitz, A1. 103 Nevans, “Norton Says GOP Can’t Impose Its Vision on City,” A1. 104 Lisa Nevans, “House Hearing to Air GOP Dreams for City,” The Washington Times 10 May 1995, final ed.: A1.

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who don’t represent the District are working on ideas they haven’t bothered even as a matter of courtesy to inform me about…. Would they do this to any other Americans?”105 Egos needed aliment, and Gingrich would have to be the one to feed them. The key, as it turned out, was dialogue. Promising that “Congress will not impose anything on D.C. where there is not community support,” on May 12th, he held the first of a series of congressional hearings on a range of issues – public schools, welfare, housing, crime, taxes – to which a group of local speakers was invited.106 That delegation included Smith; Harvey; Delabian Rice Thurston, mother of two sons in DCPS and executive director of Parents United; Carrie Thornhill, manager of the Committee on Public Education, a group of local civic and business leaders; and Karen Walker-Ellis, a parochial school parent. In mid-June, in what the Times characterized as a “dramatic shift in attitude toward city leaders,” Gingrich announced a series of town meetings around the city to be conducted with Norton at his side.107 “The hearings will be broadly focused so that no one can accuse us of a preordained agenda to be imposed on D.C.,” Rep. Steve Gunderson, Wisconsin Republican and head of Gingrich’s task force, wrote to allies in an internal strategy memo. “No solution can be implemented without public support.”108 As Gingrich assumed a more amicable stance towards the city, enthusiasm for even some of his more divisive ideas became surprisingly forthcoming. Smith said that he was “not opposed to vouchers. I believe in choice…. I just don’t want to erode public education.”109 Barry endorsed “radical surgery” for DCPS – surgery that might include charter schools and privatization. “I’m…for alternative management of our schools,” Barry said, so long as it enlisted “private enterprise with a proven track record of community involvement and being sensitive to running an African-American school system and being sensitive to our culture and our history.”110 On May 31st, with Barry’s blessing, councilmembers Kathleen Patterson and William Lightfoot introduced their own bill granting joint chartering authority to the Board of Education and a new “Commission for Charter Schools” appointed by the mayor and superintendent.111 Even before Gingrich’s task force had made any formal recommendations, the City Council was poised to transition from “schools within schools” to charter schools themselves. But as with Smith’s plan, the school board balked. Harvey stormed, “There has been no discussion or collaboration with the Board. Does this now mean that the Council sets educational policy?”112 Mohammed was even icier. “Take a look at the groups pointing the fingers…. How could the Council even dream, even put their lips together to say they have the solution to…the problems of the District’s public schools? Look at the streets, the

105 Vise and Horwitz, A1. 106 Maria Koklanaris, “GOP Backs Off from Voucher Plan for D.C. Schools,” The Washington Times 13 May 1995, final ed.: A10. 107 Nevans, “D.C. Officials Like Gingrich’s Town-Meeting Move,” A1. 108 Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” D3. 109 David A. Vise, “District School Chief Backs Voucher Plan,” The Washington Post 13 May 1995, final ed.: C1. 110 Archibald, “Mayor Supports Exemption from Federal Income Taxes,” A1. 111 Maria Koklanaris, “Council Members Ready to Propose ‘Charter Schools,’” The Washington Times 31 May 1995, final ed.: C6. 112 Koklanaris, “Council Members Ready to Propose ‘Charter Schools,’” C6.

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housing, the jails, the communities. It has all been under their jurisdiction. And it’s a total disaster.” Education reform was supposed to be the Board’s prerogative; it seemed now to have been co-opted by a pair of council members quick to kowtow to a militant Republican Congress. Disharmony between the various branches of the District government is an odd fact of political life for a city characterized by nominal partisan unity. A lopsided Democratic majority notwithstanding, members of the City Council, the Board of Education and City Hall routinely usurp one another’s authority, creating a tempestuous environment under which only a handful of issues reliably foster interagency accord. Gun control, abortion, commuter taxes – these are the mainstays on which everyone in the city seems to agree; when Congress attempts to legislate on them, the District, acting as a more or less cohesive unit, objects. Not so with school choice, which only widened the divide between the mayor, the City Council and the school board. This proved consequential, allowing congressional Republicans to tout local support while ignoring – or at least muting – local resistance. That such resistance came primarily from the Board of Education only made that strategy easier to execute. After a series of “high profile controversies” (including the Board’s unilateral decision to award cost-of-living raises to most of its members, already the highest-paid in the country), the relevance of the Board itself had become an open question. In June, Congress passed legislation offering the mayor unprecedented line-item authority over the city’s education budget; Barry, for his part, proposed eliminating the school board entirely and making the superintendent a member of his Cabinet. A number of reports by the Committee on Public Education criticized the Board president for “micro-managing and interfering with decisions that should be left to the superintendent.”113 Harvey described the Board as “caged;” Jim Ford, top aide to the City Council’s Committee on Education and Libraries, compared it to a beleaguered baseball team. “They are batting 1.000,” he told the Times. “They’ve been clobbered at every opportunity.”114 As the primary and increasingly isolated bastion of local opposition to school choice, the Board opted to compromise. In June, Harvey (along with Smith, Board member Jay Silberman and the leadership of Parents United and the D.C. Committee on Public Education) crafted her own plan endorsing, among other things, privatization, charter schools and public school vouchers. After a series of “raucous” late-night meetings, during which “more than 150 opponents jammed the hall, waving signs and hollering and hooting throughout the night,” the compromise flopped.115 Several days later, the Times wrote that “reform-minded members of the D.C. Board of Education, weary with the Board’s failure to act, are trying to disassociate themselves from their colleagues and turning to the financial Control Board and Congress to push their agendas.”116 Leading the 113 Sari Horwitz, “Wide Discontent With Schools Puts D.C. Board Under Siege,” The Washington Post 12 June 1995, final ed.: B1. 114 Maria Koklanaris, “House, Barry ‘Clobber’ District’s School Board,” The Washington Times 2 April 1995, final ed.: A1. 115 Valerie Strauss, “D.C. Council Approves School Reform but Rebuffs Privatization,” The Washington Post 21 July 1995, final ed.: D6. 116 Maria Koklanaris, “Reformers on School Board Seek Outside Help,” The Washington Times 25 July 1995, final ed.: C6.

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pack was Silberman, who insisted that “we need to move forward…. The Congress is acting, the Council is acting, the mayor is acting, and we are sitting.”117 Even as anonymous callers left messages on his home answering machine threatening “bodily harm” to anyone who voted for privatization, Silberman refused to relent. Though it would take the Board until September to reach a consensus – approving by a 7 to 4 vote a sheepish privatization plan permitting individual public schools to contract with businesses, universities and unions for help with service needs – Gingrich’s task force nevertheless agreed to use Harvey’s proposal as an “outline” for its recommendations.118 When those recommendations were finally released, the Times hailed them as “the product of extensive consultation with city school officials and parents.”119 Gunderson sketched five “Guiding Principles” for reform: to “respect the principle of Home Rule while ensuring improved education for D.C. students;” to “create a world-class system of life-time learning that is on par with the best in other leading nations;” to “empower families of limited means with enhanced educational choices;” to “engage local and national groups in a public/private partnership to improve education in our nation’s capital;” and to “design and implement an urban education delivery system that can serve as a model for the nation to follow.”120 In its practical applications, the plan included pay cuts for the school board; charter schools sponsored by, for instance, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress and the National Science Foundation; and vouchers of up to $3,000 for tuition at private schools anywhere in the metropolitan region. With this last proposal, Gunderson fired the first shot in the long and agonizing battle over vouchers in the District. To add vouchers to a bill that already promised radical reform was, to be sure, a dicey maneuver. Yet Gunderson may have had some cause for optimism. In 1995, there existed no reliable, objective gauge of public opinion on vouchers in D.C. The first and only time District residents had voted on anything even resembling vouchers was in 1981, when a staggering 89% rejected a tax credit referendum to subsidize private school tuition.121 But that, of course, was 1981 – a full decade and a half earlier. Tax credits, furthermore, are not the same as vouchers. The former are available only to taxpayers, ensuring that some poor families will find themselves ineligible for a program ostensibly designed for their benefit. In the gap between 1981 and 1995 and between tax credits and vouchers, there seemed ample room for public sentiment to swing. Gunderson’s bill targeted aid directly to low-income parents. Families with incomes at or below the federal poverty level of $15,135 for a family of four would qualify for vouchers of $3,000; half that amount would be available to those at 185% of the poverty threshold, or about $28,000 for a family of four.122 The plan would establish a private, nonprofit

117 Strauss, “D.C. Council Approves School Reform but Rebuffs Privatization,” D6. 118 Jeanne Dewey and Lisa Nevans, “Members Hit Plans to Kill or Weaken School Board,” The Washington Times 20 June 1995, final ed.: C4. 119 Nevans and Dewey, “Smithsonian a D.C. School?” C9. 120 “Back to School,” editorial, The Washington Times 5 September 1995, final ed.: A16. 121 Spencer S. Hsu, “House Approves Vouchers for D.C.,” The Washington Post 6 September 2003, final ed.: A1. 122 Lisa Nevans, “D.C. School Vouchers Stir Odium, Acclaim,” The Washington Times 10 December 1995, final ed.: A11.

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corporation to distribute a total of $5 million in vouchers for fiscal year 1997, $7 million for 1998 and $10 million each for 1999 and 2000.123 To ensure support from Smith and Barry, Gunderson demanded that vouchers “hold harmless” DCPS itself, meaning that public schools that lost students to vouchers would receive the same per-pupil allocation anyway. Initially, at least, Gunderson’s bill seemed to enjoy a guarded but genial welcome in the city. Despite its divisive elements, the Post noted with some satisfaction that the “boldest conservative ideas discussed only a short time ago,”124 including privatization, were conspicuously absent from the plan, and Harvey deemed all of Gunderson’s proposals crafted “in the spirit of partnership.”125 The first of the town meetings Gingrich promised was held at Eastern High School the night of August 2nd, 1995. More than one thousand D.C. residents attended. The Post, noting that “Gingrich has given the city a level of attention few expected,” described the meeting alternately as “unprecedented”126 and “extraordinary.”127 Norton’s tone became almost weirdly hospitable. “Nobody is seeking to make war on the District,” she said. “They are looking for a way to contribute to [its] revival…. The obligations are reasonable, and the benefits most will find surprising.”128 Although Gingrich was introduced at the meeting to “a cacophony of boos,” the Post applauded his “deferential approach and restraint:” “Once the speaker got rolling, he fielded the tough questions and statements by taking detailed notes, rather than responding.”129 In an uncharacteristic moment of humility, Gingrich said of Norton, “In D.C.…she’s the senior partner, and I’m the junior partner.”130 As the hearing ended, Norton remarked, “The people controlled that meeting, and that is how it should have been…. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind in order not to have heard and understood [their] commitment.”131 Superficially, at least, Gingrich proved a more respectful and accommodating legislator than anyone in D.C. had expected. The question is: why? Why did Gingrich appeal to the city for advice and consent? Gunderson argued that “no solution can be implemented without public support.”132 But other congressional incursions on District sovereignty suggest otherwise. A noteworthy example was the Control Board: necessary, perhaps, but almost universally detested in the city itself. Rep. Tom Davis, architect of the Control Board, waited seven weeks after publicizing his intentions before consulting a single city official besides Norton. As congressional Republicans wrested authority from the D.C. government, they blasted the city’s “addiction” to spending and a “dependency on

123 Valerie Strauss, “House Moves to Reshape D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post 3 November 1995, final ed.: B1. 124 David A. Vise and Howard Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,” The Washington Post 4 August 1995, final ed.: C3. 125 DeNeen L. Brown, “GOP Offers ‘Principles’ for Reform,” The Washington Post 3 August 1995, final ed.: A10. 126 Howard Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” The Washington Post 2 August 1995, final ed.: D1. 127 Vise and Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,” C3. 128 Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” D1. 129 Vise and Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,” C3. 130 Schneider, “Speaker Comes Out of the House to Air His Ideas for the District,” D1. 131 Vise and Schneider, “Bipartisan Partnership Works for Speaker and D.C. Delegate,” C3. 132 Vise, “GOP Looking to Sell D.C. on School Plans,” D3.

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[federal] handouts.”133 It was against this backdrop that Gingrich performed his conciliatory dance around local officials. The contrast could not have been starker. Untangling the motivations of a politician as cunning as Gingrich is not an easy proposition. I speculate, however, that perhaps education demands a more robust diplomacy than other arenas of governance. Congress, when legislating on the District, often seems to consider the city’s perspective only as a sort of inconvenient afterthought. But not in the realm of education. Gunderson’s legislation is just one of many examples of congressional education bills forged through collaboration between the city and national government. Education is unique as a matter conventionally left to the discretion of local communities – perhaps that uniqueness necessitates cooperation across distant and unequal layers of bureaucracy. If his four years as Speaker of the House were any indication, Gingrich was not one to pull his political punches; in his relationship with Barry, something more than mere docility was at work. I will return to this argument in later chapters; for now, suffice it to note that in 1995, Gingrich’s indulgence towards the opinions of District parents and policymakers was real and remarkable. Of course, the appearance of cozy relationships can sometimes disguise a power dynamic that is anything but. Perhaps support from the city arose not from true excitement about Gunderson’s bill, but rather from a sort of hopeless fatalism: that Congress would act however it pleased, public opinion notwithstanding. Providing fodder for that apprehension, some congressmen conditioned their willingness to negotiate with the city on deference to the Control Board and its sometimes onerous dictates. Rep. William Clinger, Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, warned that “nobody should doubt the resolve of this committee to take any steps necessary if District government officials do not cooperate with the financial Control Board.”134 In June, the Post concluded that Smith and others had “cautiously endorsed some of Gunderson’s ideas in part because they fear they’ll have no say in the process if they simply oppose him.”135 The Times added that as the Board debated its own reform strategies, members had to “worry not only about how opponents of school choice will view a ‘yes’ vote, but also how Congress will view a ‘no’ vote.” One Board member, who requested anonymity, told the Times, “I think [voting against choice measures] will be the last nail in our coffin [with Congress].”136 When the Board rejected Smith’s privatization scheme for the second time, Ward 3 member Erika Landberg apologized on behalf of her colleagues for being “such wimps.” “This is paralysis by analysis,” said Shook. “If we don’t change things, Congress will.”137 When the Board finally passed its privatization plan in September, member Ann Wilcox, the swing vote, explained that she sanctioned the bill because “Congress was going to do it anyway…. If

133 Fauntroy, 168-9. 134 David A. Vise and Howard Schneider, “More Reform Ahead for D.C., GOP Says,” The Washington Post 31 March 1995, final ed.: A1. 135 Horwitz, “Wide Discontent With Schools Puts D.C. Board Under Siege,” B1. 136 Maria Koklanaris, “Schools Decision Won’t Be an Easy One,” The Washington Times 14 July 1995, final ed.: C4. 137 Valerie Strauss, “D.C. Board Avoids School Privatization,” The Washington Post, 20 July 1995, final ed.: A1.

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we’re not open to options, they will just do it over our heads and we will lose even more power.”138 Fatalism is a fascinating explanation for moments of solidarity between D.C. and the federal government; one that calls into question the assumption often championed by home rule advocates that local policies most accurately reflect local needs and desires. Fascinating – but not entirely compelling. There is no doubt that Congress acted as a catalyst for an education reform agenda more rapid and more radical than that endorsed by the mayor, the City Council or, most conspicuously, the Board. But to suggest that Congress somehow coerced the District government into acquiescence is to ignore the fact that many in the city had already voiced their support, albeit hesitantly, for school choice. That a derivative of charter schools – “schools within schools” – had appeared on Smith’s agenda a full year before Gingrich even mentioned Washington as a potential site for reform proves that the city had already discovered its own ways to offer educational options. Gingrich recognized in those gestures a willingness to experiment with what many perceived as a Republican ideological project: vouchers, charter schools, privatization. And while his overtures to the principle of home rule may have been pure political posturing, Gingrich made a genuine effort to include the city in his deliberations. A mistake that home rule advocates often make is to view D.C. as a sort of ideologically cohesive whole, unified around the hallowed principle of localism. Despite the city’s formidable Democratic majority, as the charter schools debate illustrates, such unity rarely occurs. Whether Congress would have acted without local approval is debatable but irrelevant. Gingrich and Gunderson promoted policies already endorsed by what was, at the very least, a loud, powerful minority in the city itself. III. “The Old Rules” As promised, Gingrich attached his plan to D.C.’s annual budget bill, first introduced to the House in October of 1995. That bill, unlike Gunderson’s recommendations, was immediately condemned as an affront to home rule. The bill would repeal a locally popular program granting health benefits to the unmarried partners of D.C. government employees – a program already left unfunded by congressional stonewalling. It would bar the city from spending its own tax dollars to fund hospitals and clinics that performed abortions except in cases of rape or incest – a provision that the Post described as “the most intrusive antiabortion rider to a D.C. measure in memory.”139 And, perhaps most ominously, it would cut $256 million from the city’s federal allocation. Barry, who had once championed such cuts, predicted “a devastating domino effect…necessitating the layoff of teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers…. City services will come to a halt. The District government will be unable to pay its bills or to function as an efficient entity.” When the budget passed, Norton was catatonic: “This bill has almost nothing in it for the District except amendments that are insulting and abhorrent.”140

138 DeNeen L. Brown, “D.C. Board Approves Plan to Privatize Some Schools,” The Washington Post 21 September 1995, final ed.: A1. 139 “An Education Vote That Counts,” editorial, The Washington Post 2 November 1995, final ed.: A30. 140 Howard Schneider, “House Approves Plan to Slash D.C. Budget,” The Washington Post 3 November 1995, final ed.: A1.

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Congress usually makes its annual payment to the city in a single lump sum on October 1st, the first day of the fiscal year. Although Gingrich had hoped his package would win congressional approval by then, October came and went without a compromise. Stalling passage of the city’s $4.994 billion budget ($660 million of which was to come from the federal treasury) was a standoff between Gingrich and a posse of some 44 predominantly Democratic Senators led by Vermont Republican James Jeffords. The sticking points? Abortion and vouchers. As winter neared, whatever mood of innovation had greeted vouchers that spring had vanished. Eager to implement a more prudent agenda of reform, Smith lamented, “Right now, until Congress approves legislation, we still have to operate under the old rules.”141 Norton complained that “this bill is being held up exclusively on non-District issues…. Republicans are into their own number on vouchers…. None of this is related to the day-to-day operations of the District. I see no movement.”142 When Gingrich refused a compromise to hold a separate procedural vote on vouchers for the sake of passing the other 11 components of his plan, Jeffords accused the House leadership of allowing “the whole city [to] go down the drain.”143 A series of “continuing resolutions” – authorizing the city to spend its own revenues up to a maximum of $4.8 billion, but forbidding it from allocating most of its federal grants – kept the D.C. government open through the astonishing six months that it took Congress to reach an agreement on the budget. Deals were brokered, then promptly canceled. “I have no idea what is up their sleeve,” Jeffords said of House Republicans. “First we have an agreement, and everybody signs off on it. Then I find out it is scuttled…. It is so frustrating that the city is getting yanked around this way over vouchers.”144 Norton was bewildered: “[It’s] worse than limbo. It’s like being thrown into outer space…. It’s a stalemate without options.”145 Meanwhile, Barry – who was keeping the D.C. government open on the dubious authority of “a wink and a nod,” a verbal promise of pending funds from Congress – drafted a plan to furlough a third of the city’s 39,000 employees in the event that Congress failed to pass a budget. The Times noted that “privately, officials on all sides said it is clearly illegal for the city to remain open while it has no congressionally approved budget. But the law has never been tested, and there is little precedent.”146 Even with an amendment leaving approval of vouchers to the discretion of the City Council – “a venue decidedly inhospitable to the idea” – 41 Senate Democrats and three Republicans (Senators John Chafee of Rhode Island, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania) filibustered the appropriations bill not once, but four times: on February 27th and 29th and again on March 5th and 12th. After the Senate’s first failure to invoke cloture, the Post foresaw “a looming crisis of Congress’s own making.” It accused

141 DeNeen L. Brown, “Still Waiting for Reform,” The Washington Post 31 August 1995, final ed.: J1. 142 Lisa Nevans, “School Voucher Stalemate Delays District Budget Bill,” The Washington Times 5 December 1995, final ed.: A1. 143 Lisa Nevans, “Vouchers Feud Threatens City Funding Bill,” The Washington Times 15 December 1995, final ed.: C7. 144 Howard Schneider, “Congress Leaves District in Lurch on Budget Deal,” The Washington Post 19 December 1995, final ed.: A1. 145 Howard Schneider, “GOP Dispute Over School Vouchers May Force D.C. to Shut Down Again,” The Washington Post 21 December 1995, final ed.: D1. 146 Lisa Nevans, “Speaker Allows City to Stay Open Despite Impasse,” The Washington Times 22 December 1995, final ed.: C8.

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Democrats – the city’s traditional allies in Congress – of fishing for campaign contributions: “The opposition of Senate Democrats must be…for show to draw applause from the national educational lobby, since it’s unlikely school vouchers will ever see the light of day in this city with these politicians.”147 To Barry, the question of vouchers was becoming secondary to a more urgent concern: the city needed money. He wrote directly to Clinton that “to use 600,000 people in this national debate over school vouchers is unfair, unjust, wrong and quite frankly, disgusting politics.”148 But Gunderson refused to bend on what he described as the “package deal” of public school reform: without vouchers, “the whole thing is lost.”149 Gingrich was practically hysterical: “We are cheating the children of Washington, D.C., every day…. We put them in buildings that are terrible, surrounded by a bureaucracy that doesn’t care, with a central office that ought to be abolished” – comments that Mohammed dubbed “offensive, cowardly and an irresponsible insult to the citizens of the District.”150 In the midst of this political bedlam, the Post published what was probably its most disheartening but astute commentary on the tortuous fight to bring school choice to D.C.:

So much for the era of good feeling between Congress and the city that Mr. Gingrich’s town hall meeting at Eastern High School was expected to produce. Remember that August night? Referring to himself and members of Congress, the schmoozing speaker told the packed auditorium, “Those of us who visit do not have the knowledge and do not have the right to micromanage the daily lives of the people of this city.” The audience ate it up. The speaker evidently has decided those words are worth eating, too. Since the Eastern love fest, Congress has been treating the District as its nearest and dearest plaything. With all the problems facing the nation, Congressional Republicans have transformed themselves into a board of education for the District of Columbia, imposing all sorts of ideas on the school system – including tuition vouchers – without even a semblance of concern for what local officials, educators and residents may think, let alone want. Not to be outdone, Democrats – acting at the behest of national education lobbies and also without input from city leaders – have decided to fight tuition vouchers to the District’s death…. Congress and the national lobbies – if they have any shred of respect left for the citizens of the District – should take their fight elsewhere. This is no way to fix a broken city.151

By the time Gingrich “caved in” (to borrow his own phrase) to Democratic opposition and the budget finally passed – parts of it through an omnibus appropriations bill and parts through yet another continuing resolution – “the damage to the financially strapped city [had already] been done.”152 Payments to vendors for essential public services, notably Medicaid, were delayed and, in some cases, canceled entirely; government workers were furloughed; wages were cut. In the House, Gingrich’s task force disbanded and Walsh

147 “Hostage to a National Agenda,” editorial, The Washington Post 27 February 1996, final ed.: A18. 148 Lisa Nevans, “Federal Cash Promised,” The Washington Times 1 March 1996, final ed.: C5. 149 Lisa Nevans, “Senator Plots Path to D.C. Budget,” The Washington Times 6 March 1996, final ed.: C7. 150 Lisa Nevans, “D.C. Spending Bill Stalls as Senate Filibuster Holds,” The Washington Times 13 March 1996, final ed.: C5. 151 “A Fine Mess, Mr. Speaker,” editorial, The Washington Post 17 March 1996, final ed.: C6. 152 Lisa Nevans and Brian Blomquist, “The Check Is in the Mail, Much to District’s Relief,” The Washington Times, 31 March 1996, final ed.: A1.

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abdicated his seat on the D.C. subcommittee to search for another committee to chair. Asked if he would introduce a new vouchers bill the coming year, his answer was unequivocal: “No way.”153

• • • What lessons can be gleaned from this first skirmish in the battle over school choice in D.C.? Charter schools were, in some respects, an anomaly of the home rule era: a concept envisioned and implemented in its seminal form by the superintendent, then expanded by Gingrich and his Republican allies, several of whom – notably Gunderson – adopted a laudably courteous attitude towards the city itself. Gingrich and Barry seemed equally receptive to each other’s ideas – a reciprocity that benefited them both. Barry gained an avenue by which to transmit to Congress his wishes and those of his constituents; Gingrich secured a verifiable claim to local support for his agenda. That Gunderson’s legislation featured a mixture of provisions favored by both parties was no coincidence. Throughout this debate, the central question was not whether Washington would adopt educational options for parents, but what form those options would take. To please Gingrich, vouchers were in; to appease Barry, privatization was out. Diplomacy generated a bill that both sides could celebrate as their own. Sadly, the charter schools movement in D.C. did not end with Gunderson’s bill. The District did ultimately win a law authorizing the creation of independent, publicly-funded charter schools – one of the few reforms to survive the budget debacle in Congress. But at what cost? As months of political gridlock left D.C. without a blueprint for reform – indeed, without a budget at all – even the Republican leadership began to recognize the damaging role they had played in the city. “We are part of the problem,” confessed Davis. “The Republican and Democratic global fight in Congress has left the city as a hapless pawn…. I think you can point to both sides in this. Nobody has put the city first. They have all put the larger agenda to the forefront, and the city’s interest has been kind of incidental…. We have caused problems for the city and don’t come here with clean hands anymore when we talk about what the city should do.”154 The convergence of local and national support for school choice produced a “unique moment” of mutual energy for reform. In the arena of education, D.C. was and is a city with real, urgent needs. That Congress allowed those needs to be subsumed beneath the farce of the appropriations process is the shame of this story.

153 Lisa Nevans, “GOP Finds ‘Urban Jewel’ Elusive,” The Washington Times 14 April 1996. 154 David A. Vise, “Hill Leaders Take Themselves to Task for D.C. Woes,” The Washington Post 19 March 1996, final ed.: B1.

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To continue Blair’s account, we turn to Melissa Schoeplein, another Brown student of mine, whose research paper focused on what she called the “charter school revolution” in the District of Columbia. Document #16: Melissa Schoeplein, “Washington D.C.: The Charter School Revolution In the Wake of a Congressional Takeover,” Unpublished paper for ED164, “Public Schools and Politics,” Brown University, December, 2001. On August 5, 1997, President Clinton signed the Revitalization Act, whereby the Control Board’s authority was extended to control all of the finances and almost have complete managerial power (the Mayor then only had control over such small agencies as the libraries and tourism, and the city council only existed in an advisory role).155 “This deepened many people’s resentment over the board’s dispossession of the local electorate’s power. The act also brought to attention the unsettling reality that the District’s problems extended deeper than fiscal issues, and that true revitalization would demand more than a balanced budget,” noted the Close Up Foundation, a civic education organization.156

In 1997, the Control Board focused on conservative budgeting and spending and aggressive tax monitoring, and the District ended the fiscal year with a budget surplus of $185 million and a clean record with the IRS (“a welcomed change from 1996’s audit, which had revealed forged signatures on contracts, incorrect addresses on tax records, and 261 dead people on the city’s payroll!”)157 By the end of 1997, most city leaders agreed that the District had made substantial progress towards financial recovery. One city leader in particular received the most credit for achieving these accomplishments: His name was Anthony Williams and he had held the Control Board-created position of Chief Financial Officer since 1995. “Williams’ supporters saw him as an honorable intellectual, with a record of effective management and a stellar story of achievement in the District government. In many ways, Williams was the antidote to Marry Barry that they had been long waiting.”158 Before 1998 would be over, Williams, with his trademark bow tie, would be the new Mayor of Washington, D.C.

The day after Williams was elected, the Control Board committed to allowing him to resume day-to-day operations of the same agencies Barry controlled before the 1997 bailout. The Control Board, however, still had power in D.C. and could veto major decisions and review mayoral appointments of city agencies. With Williams, though, they had a positive working relationship, and the city moved closer to autonomy at a rapid pace.159 On September 30, 2001, the Control Board went dormant after six years of operation because, according to District Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, “the District balanced four straight budgets and met other important financial goals…two years ahead of the congressional mandate to do so.”160

155 Ibid. 156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 158 “1998 Mayoral Race—Enter Anthony Williams.” The Washington Redbook (Washington, D.C.: The Close Up Foundation, 2000) 21 159 Ibid., 22 160 http://www.house.gov/norton/20011002.htm

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Throughout this struggle over fiscal management and government control, it is no surprise that the District’s schools have been affected. In November 1996, the Control Board had, “seized operation of the system from the school board…saying the schools were failing and the elected panel had been ineffective.”161 That same year they hired Julius W. Becton, Jr., a retired three star general, to lead the failing schools—thereby ousting former Superintendent Franklin L. Smith who had been criticized for “pervasive mismanagement.”162 In 1996, the Control Board created The District of Columbia Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees, a nine-member panel charged with overseeing the day-to-day operations of the school system. With this system, both the mayor and City Council could adjust the school budget and veto items before going to the Control Board for approval. However, the Control Board retained the ability to overrule as they saw fit.163 The District also had a Board of Education at the time, an eleven member elected body reduced to advisory status by the Control Board during Becton’s tenure (allowed only to make contract and curriculum recommendations). Education Week reporter Caroline Hendrie aptly referred to the power structure in Washington, D.C. as “Byzantine.”164

Arlene Ackerman succeeded Becton in 1998. In Ackerman’s two years in D.C., she created a system of academic standards, ended promotion of unprepared students to the next grade, developed a more equitable formula for financing schools, negotiated salary increases for teachers, and created staff development programs.165 Although Ackerman succeeded in raising the expectations of the school district, student achievement continued to improve at a slow rate. According to NAEP, Stanford-9 results released in May of 2000, “showed a majority of students at every grade level falling in the lowest-scoring categories, ‘basic’ and ‘below basic,’” according to Education Week’s 2000 Quality Counts report about Washington, D.C.166 Ackerman received criticism also for her administrative shortcomings—specifically her inability to solve chronic payroll problems. “[Last year] we recruited 1,100 new teachers and lost 200 because we couldn’t pay them on time,” remarked Ackerman in a May 2000 interview with Education Week.167 Teachers often “shrug and simply say, ‘That’s D.C. for you’ when they are not paid correctly or on time,” noted one DCPS teacher in a personal interview.168 In July 2000, Ackerman resigned as the district’s superintendent to become the superintendent of schools in San Francisco. When she left, Ackerman cited the “multiple layers of governmental oversight of that nation’s capital—including the District of Columbia Council, the city’s school board, and Congress, which, under the U.S. Constitution has ultimate authority over the city government—had thwarted her efforts to improve the problem-plagued school system.”169

161 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1388-2000Jul29 162 http://www.edweek.com/ew/vol-16/14D.C..h16 163 Ibid. 164 Ibid. 165 http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc01/states/qc01policy.cfm?slug=17qcD.C..h20 166 ibid. 167 http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=38D.C..h19&keywords=charterschool 168 Mary Finn, personal interview, 7 December 2001. 169 http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc01/states/qc01policy.cfm?slug=17qcD.C..h20

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Paul Vance, former superintendent for the Montgomery County schools in nearby Maryland, replaced Ackerman as Superintendent—the third in the District in four years. The Control Board appointed Vance to this position, again illustrating how this political body influences the leadership in Washington, D.C. schools. Vance’s goals include streamlining the district’s costly special education program (which consumes one-third of the school system’s budget to serve roughly 10,000 or less than one-seventh of its students) and fixing and modernizing deteriorating school buildings with the United States Army Corps of Engineers.170 “Vance is something new to the D.C. schools—a confident leader who knows education and does not need this job. Vance can and does tell folks to take a hike,” noted Post report Marc Fisher.171 Working with Vance is the city’s elected Board of Education which regained its oversight of the schools in 2001 following a district-wide ballot-initiative on June 27, 2000.172 “The idea for the referendum,” reported Education Week, “came in part from a study released in September 1999 by the nonprofit D.C. Appleseed Center, which consulted parents, business leaders, educators, and students on what changes they thought were needed.”173 The Board of Education now officially makes policy on the education-related issues in the district. Five elected members (including the city-wide elected president) and four at-large members, appointed by Mayor Anthony Williams, serve on the Board.174 At the time of the June 2000 ballot initiative, Mayor Williams, tried to push forward a plan for a five-member school board, all mayorally appointed—a plan opposed by the council members and the community. Instead, Washington voters decided to approve the “hybrid board of elected members and appointees.”175 Noted Education Week researcher Kerry White in her Quality Counts District of Columbia Report Card, “The governance changes come to the system at a time when student enrollment is on the decline, owing both to the outflow of families with school-age children to the suburbs and a growing charter school movement.”176

The Charter School Movement “In places like D.C. where the only public choices [are]…between bad or worse, the charter system has offered some parents a third option,” noted one teacher in the DCPS.177 In the District, following the release of a report that chronicled the failing district public schools, the U.S. Congress authorized the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995. This act authorized public charter schools as an effort to create a new, vibrant force in education. Charter school supporters envisioned a new breed of public schools to serve young people in search of an alternative to the failing D.C. public school system. Charter schools, as one reporter, described it, are a “dream…in essence a privately run public

170 http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=18speced.h20&keyword 171 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4 172 http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=38D.C..h19&keywords=charterschool 173 Ibid. 174 http://www.k12.D.C..us/DCPS/boe/boe_frame.html 175 http://www.edweek.org/sreports/qc01/states/qc01policy.cfm?slug=17qcD.C..h20 176 Ibid. 177 Mary Finn, personal interview, 7 December 2001.

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school…a way out, an answer, an engine for change.”178 These schools are public schools that receive funds based on the number of students they enroll. Two senior fellows at the Hudson Institute noted in a 1998 editorial to the Washington Post, “[Charter schools are] open to all comers, financed by taxpayers and accountable to public authorities for their continued existence. But the school bureaucracy doesn’t run them. There’s the (political) rub.”179 The Reform Act specifies that the charter schools are exempt from any statutes, policies, rules, and regulations established for DCPS by any District governmental entity. Both the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board and the District of Columbia Board of Education can grant up to a combined twenty charters a year to schools in Washington, D.C.180 Schools created by both boards are entirely independent of the DCPS and the District of Columbia Government. However, the two chartering boards have adopted different systems for monitoring and evaluating charter schools. A study conducted by D.C. Appleseed Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on local Washington, D.C. issues, …[recommended] in their 2001 report that “the boards align their standards for approving and overseeing the charters more closely,” and suggested that “policymakers should examine whether the city is best served by maintaining two separate boards.”181 Charter schools do function differently than the [other] DCPS [schools]. Charter teachers are not unionized and teacher pay and benefits are dictated by market forces. Charter schools may be created in three ways: as startups, by conversion from private schools, and by conversion from DCPS schools. Each charter school is organized as a non-profit corporation with its own board of directors, at least two members of which must be parents of students enrolled in the school. The school corporation is given exclusive control over expenditures, administration, personnel, and instructional methods. Charters are granted for 15 years, with unlimited renewals. They must report annually to their chartering boards on academic progress and produce an annual audited financial statement. Charters may be closed down after five years for failure to achieve their academic goals or any time there is financial mismanagement. 182 For charter schools, their charter will be renewed if they only succeed in achieving what they set out to do. If they fail, the charters will be revoked. “This degree of accountability is absent from conventional public schools, of course, as is the risk of a school perishing because it does not satisfy its customers. Nobody, after all, is obliged to attend a charter school,” noted Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution Chester Finn183 Since the passing of the charter legislation, 38 charter schools have been created in Washington, D.C. They serve 10,000 students—15% of children in public school in the

178 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4 179 http://www.edexcellence.net/library/afraid.html 180 http://www.D.C.publiccharter.com/geninformation.htm 181 http://www.appleseeds.net/post.html 182 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/ 183 http://www.edexcellence.net/library/account.html

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district.184 These growing numbers indicate that “[t]he District’s romance with charter schools [has become] a serious relationship.”185 Charter schools in urban area such as Washington, D.C. serve young people in need of educational opportunities. Many of the conventional schools do not meet their needs, don’t provide safe learning environments, and offer unchallenging curriculum. In the D.C. charter schools, 79% of the students are low-income, 8% are special education, and 3% are Limited English Proficiency.186 Of the thirty-eight charter schools in the District, many are targeted at “at risk” youth (including youth in the court system). Many boast individual attention, some focus on the arts and technology (School for Arts in Learning), some work on college-prep (Meridian), and others on outdoor education (Sasha Bruce). Some schools use the nation’s capital as a classroom and offer a public policy or law and civic education centered schools (Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public Policy and Thurgood Marshall Academy), and some offer “supportive services for young immigrant students” with ESL classes (Carlos Rosario). Still others promote specific trades, such as Marriott Hospitality High or Booker T. Washington School for skilled careers in construction and the building trade.187

Support for the charter school movement in Washington, D.C. also comes from politically active community groups—some of which have become professionalized and work on activism efforts full time. For example, Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS) describes itself as activists originally involved in DCPS who “came to the conclusion that public charter schools are the city’s best hope for timely, meaningful school reform.”188 In 1996, FOCUS became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has, with its community-based board of trustees, strived to provide “key support to the burgeoning charter school movement…, recruiting and training charter school developers; leading the D.C. Public Charter School Coalition in its efforts to improve and protect charter legislation; and informing parents and the public about the city’s new, exciting public schools of choice.”189

Another active citizens group is the D.C. Appleseed Center, “an independent non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to making the District of Columbia and the Washington Metropolitan area a better place to live and work, primarily through projects seeking to reform and strengthen the financial health of the District and the performance of governmental institutions that affect the District.”190 For example, in April of 2001, they released a report entitled “Charter Schools in the District of Columbia: Improving Systems for Accountability, Autonomy, and Competition.”191 Although D.C. Appleseed says that they are “neither an advocate for nor an opponent of charter schools, but rather…an advocate of a quality public education system,” their involvement and policy publications add to the dialogue about the charter school movement and the funding issues in the District. Some of their ideas, such as holding a referendum in June 2000 to

184 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4. [The current numbers (2007) are 71 charter schools enrolling 19,924 students, or 33.4% of the students in the district.] 185 http://www.edexcellence.net/library/garvey.html 186 http://www.dcpubliccharter.com/report01.htm 187 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/charter%20list.htm 188 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/ 189 Ibid. 190 http://www.appleseeds.net/D.C./ 191 Ibid. (See below Document #8)

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create a new School Board, have directly influenced political decisions in the city, illustrating their impact. (It should be noted that D.C. Appleseed belongs to a larger national foundation, the Appleseed Foundation, which focuses on law-based grassroots activism).192 Funding Issues The Reform Act and related funding legislation established a Uniform Per Pupil Funding Formula for the District of Columbia, under which all students—DCPS and charters⎯are funded at the same dollar amount. In addition, these laws establish a per-pupil facilities allowance for the public charter schools that is tied to DCPS’s capital funding.”193 This formula was slated to take effect for Fiscal Year 1997 (FY97). However, creating a permanent funding formula for the District proved to be difficult, and so they opted instead to adopt a temporary funding formula. The district used this temporary funding formula in both FY97 and FY98, which averaged $5,361 per pupil (compared to $9,650 in DCPS).194 In September 1996, the District opened its first two charter schools. When Congress received the District’s budget in May of 1997, only $1.2 million was allotted for charter schools. This money could pay for 135 students, but more than 300 students intended to enroll. A year later, the District chartering authorities would receive 37 public charter school applications, indicating the movement’s success. In fall of 1997, one more charter school opened (totaling three in the district), and the schools opened uncertain if they would receive the money supposedly allocated per school.195 That same fall, an informal network of public charter school leaders and friends formed the D.C. Public Charter School Coalition. The Coalition’s “initial mission was to help public charter schools gain access to vacant D.C. school buildings. When close to twenty new public charter schools were approved in 1998, the Coalition broadened its scope to become a forum for planning, capacity building, mutual support, and political action.”196 In September of 1997, the D.C. Public Charter School Coalition succeeded in lobbying for the FY98 public charter school appropriation to be raised to $3.76 million and asked the District to address public charter school facilities costs and establish a revolving loan for first year charter schools. Despite the passing of the legislation, on October 15th the payment to charter schools was delayed because of under funding. One of the charter schools, Options, was forced to take out a loan to pay for its operating costs.197

In February of 1998 the Education Committee of the District Council recommended a bold formula-based facilities allowance and an increased per pupil formula. This recommendation passed in May, however the facilities allowance fell $423 short of what the formula recommended per pupil. Also in May, the D.C. Public Charter School 192 http://www.appleseeds.net/mission.html 193 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/ 194 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/chronology.htm and http://nces.ed.gov/naep3/ states/profile.asp?state=D.C. 195 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/ 196 Ibid. 197 Ibid.

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Coalition accurately predicted that for FY99 $30 million would be needed, however the budget sent to Capitol Hill for approval in June only allocated for $12.2 million to be spent, a shortfall of approximately $18 million. 198

In the fall of 1998, sixteen new charter schools opened, uncertain if they would receive their per-pupil allotment because of the budget problems. Complications arose when Congress approved the bill. Starting in August of that year, the House D.C. Appropriations Committee allocated federal funds to supplement the inadequate local public charter school money, however, the Senate D.C. Appropriations Committee did not. In October, this complication affected most new schools in that they did not receive their first scheduled payment from the district because the Appropriations Act passed only provided funding at previous levels—not the new, larger level. “Cash flow problems put several public charter schools in serious jeopardy,” noted the Coalition199 In the end, on November 19th, the D.C. Appropriations Act passed as part of the federal budget. Federal funds did end up supplementing the shortfall and supplied $15.6 million.

The next year, advocacy groups, such the Coalition, predicted that an additional $30 million would be needed to fund charters. However, Mayor Williams’s budget only allowed for an increase of $17.8 million. In April, the District Council only supported an additional $2 million—enough to fund only 300 of the expected increase of 3,500 students. That June, though, the District Council decided to set aside 5% of the DCPS budget to be earmarked towards charter schools. This move yielded the desired $30 million. The New Charter Schools Loan Fund (a creation by the District), however, missed its June 1st deadline for new schools dependent on the funds. The schools had to wait until September to see the money. That fall, nine new schools open.

In October 1999, the President vetoed the D.C. Appropriations Act and the budget was funded through continuing resolutions. On November 29th the President finally signed the D.C. budget as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act. However, in November 1999 the Control Board ordered an enrollment and residency audit and the CFO announced further payments would be withheld until the completion of the audit. Once completed in December, the audit then had to be interpreted. Meanwhile, since payments were being withheld, charter schools publicly announced that they might miss their end of the year payroll and others predicted that they would fall short in January. Emergency funds were then created to alleviate this problem, but as of Jan 3, 2000 no charter school had received its full October payment.

While charter school administrators and interest groups fought for the funds needed to run the schools, the DCPS system was exempt from the per-pupil funding formula, which had been established to guarantee equity in the city’s funding of public school students (charter or DCPS). “Although [the funding formula] was put in place in 1996, it was not until fiscal year 2001 that public charter school students were fully funded in accordance with the law… And for the first time, in fiscal year 2002 DCPS will receive no operating funds beyond those that are generated by the Formula,” remarked FOCUS, obviously pleased

198 Ibid. 199 Ibid.

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charter school students will finally receive the financial respect they were originally promised.

The funding problems directly affect the children in the charter school system. In a January 24, 2000 letter Robert Cane, then Acting Director of the D.C. Charter School Coalition outlined how the funding problems would negatively affect the schools. “The cashflow crisis directly affects children,” he noted. Specifically, textbook and supplies cannot be purchased, temporary support staff instead of permanent can only be hired, no money exists to hire security guards to ensure safety, charter school leaders are forced to work in a stressful environment that increases the likelihood of burnout, and lack of money increases the chances of defaulting on a loan payment from a banking institution that already agreed to help out in lieu of the unreliable city finding.200 Charter Successes Despite these chronic funding problems, one theme resonates in the battle for funding: money is needed because the charter school movement in Washington, D.C. has taken off. Perhaps the concept of competition has put some pressure on DCPS “You would have thought by now, after two, three years, that the public schools would be asking, ‘Why are kids leaving? What should we be doing? But I don’t see it. Instead, they fight with us, and more students leave them,” noted former D.C. public schools administrator Irasema Salcido, founder and principal of the Cesar Chavez High School for Public Policy 201 However, Superintendent Vance has started to tackle these questions. Unlike his predecessor, Ackerman, who used an “antagonistic approach” to charter schools, fighting them “at every turn—over access to facilities, over payments, over bureaucratic matters large and small,” he has tried something new. Vance has worked with charters cooperatively and resolved, “to do battle with them instead at a completely different level—in the classroom,” noted researcher Fisher.202 “Superintendent Paul Vance is moving energetically to reshape the regular schools—reassigning principals and teachers and discharging unqualified staff,” commented the Washington Post.203 This method of working with schools led to the DCPS Duke Ellington School for the Arts withdrawing a plan to seek charter status after DCPS promised to grant the school benefits charters receive such as more authority over hiring and managing finances.204 Mike Peabody, the executive director of FOCUS said that the Duke Ellington deal with DCPS is “exactly how the school system should respond.”

200 http://www.focus-D.C.charter.org/letters/012400Rivlin.htm 201 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4 202 Ibid. 203 Washington Post Editorial B06 8/12/2001 Sunday Final Edition 204 http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=25D.C..h18&keywords=D

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Charter Failures

The charter school movement in D.C. has not happened without some bumps in the road, however. The first failure for the D.C. Charter Schools came with the Afro-centric Marcus Garvey Charter School in 1996. Researcher Finn believes that the D.C. Board of Education hastily approved the Garvey charter and failed to establish careful review procedures including checking the people involved in starting the school. “Indeed,” noted Finn in 1996, the Board seems to have approached this solemn obligation [chartering] with about as much care as it brought to its stewardship of the regular school system—precisely why the Control Board recently stripped it of its powers save in a few areas that, ironically, include the District’s charter school program.”205 Not all charter schools succeed, and the procedures are in place to step in when this happens, as with the Garvey School. In August of 2001, therefore, the D.C. Board of Education voted to begin the process of shutting down three charter schools in Washington, D.C. “Monitors sent out by the school board found Richard Milburn Public Charter Alternative High School’s two campuses lacking in textbooks and industrial supplies, and with student absentee rates ranging as high as nearly 100 percent on the date of one visit.”206 The World Public Charter School and Vistas Preparatory Public Charter School were also cited because of lack of educational curriculum and materials, poor classroom management, and financial problems. Charter schools do have their critics. “I hope [charters] are an experiment and they will succeed and go away,” commented one charter schoolteacher in the district. “To take out a handful of our kids and give them something doesn’t improve the lives of most of our kids. Charters have no training, no certification. They may be dedicated to teaching black kids, but that’s not enough.”207 This teacher went on to comment that the students who attend charter schools usually have very involved parents pushing them to seek out education alternatives. She wonders about the students who don’t have involved parents. A DCPS teacher worries, “about the balkanization of education as a result of the charter movement. When we have schools for specific purposes like supporting the hospitality industry (Marriott run school) we run the risk of pigeonholing students at a very young age and potentially limiting their choices later in life.”208 However, public schools in the United States were founded on the idea that in order for a democracy to work people need to know how to read, write, and be active citizens. Charter schools may not be achieving higher standards (yet), “But,” noted reporter Marc Fisher in his analysis, “teachers—about half of whom are refugees from DCPS—and students seem more satisfied at the charters. They boast not about test scores—nothing to boast about there—but about small classes and dedicated teachers, about schools where each child is known and encouraged.”209 205 http://www.edexcellence.net/library/account.html 206 Washingotn Post Editorial B06 8/12/2001 Sunday Final Edition 207 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4 208 Mary Finn, personal interview, 7 December 2001. 209 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35561-2001Apr4

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Perhaps the radical congressional takeover of the District of Columbia governance in 1995 paved the way for other radical changes, and in the case of education of the District’s 77,194 students, this change came in the form of the charter school movement. Unfortunately, as the city struggled to regain its financial confidence, the charter schools languished in the wake of this financial uncertainty, often living month to month on bank loans and funding promises from Congress and federal agencies. With the support of community advocacy groups such as FOCUS and Appleseed, however, the charter schools’ mission remained on the radar of the DC Public Charter School Board, the Mayor, and the District’s School Board, and eventually the schools received their deserved funding. The charter schools also seem to be pushing DCPS, under the leadership of Paul Vance, in the direction of assessing their own educational weaknesses. Even though the District regained fiscal control in September of 2001 when the Control Board officially dissolved, until the U.S. Constitution is changed, the possibility of congressional influence in the District exists more than in any other urban school district in the nation. In the six years of the Control Board’s existence, Congress showed how they could, if so desired, control every arm in the District’s governance, including the schools. Because of Congress’ unique role, schools in D.C. can “become the battleground for Congress’ annual tug-of-war over partisan education agendas” whereby congressmen from across the nation’s fifty states can, in the words of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD, take the “opportunity to debate the differences in our respective approaches to public education.”210 Meanwhile, in the shadow of the White House and the Capitol Dome, the District’s students continue to strive to learn in the city where, as the official license plate motto states (borrowing the words of the colonists fighting the American Revolution), there still is “Taxation Without Representation.” The DC Appleseed Center, a public affairs not-for-profit, took on the project of evaluating the new DC charter schools. Following is the second (and last) of their reports. Document #17: DC Appleseed Center, Charter schools in the District of Columbia: Improving systems for accountability, autonomy, and competition (Washington, DC: DC Appleseed Center, 2001) INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Since they were first authorized in 1996, charter schools in the District of Columbia have quickly become a substantial part of the D.C. public education system. In the current school year, nearly 10,000 children are enrolled in charter schools in the District, which are budgeted to receive $105 million⎯representing over 12% of all public school students and a comparable percentage of the public education budget.211 In relative terms, the

210 http://www.edweek.com/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=02D.C..h18&keywords=D 211 D.C. Public Schools (“DCPS”) and public charter school enrollment figures are from Thompson, Cobb, Bazillo & Associates, P.C., Audit of the Official Membership of the District of Columbia Public Schools and Public Charter Schools as of October 5, 2000 (Draft dated January 15, 2001). FY2001 appropriations include all local funds appropriated for DCPS and public charter school operating costs (excluding DCPS capital outlays and

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District has experienced one of the fastest shifts in the country from the centralized system that usually governs traditional public schools, to the decentralized approach that is the hallmark of charter school education. The development over the past five years of a new system for public education governance has been complicated by the virtually simultaneous enactment of two separate statutory schemes for charter schools—one enacted by the D.C. Council and the other by Congress—both of which still exist. In addition, the federally-enacted statutory scheme (which takes precedence in such matters) calls for the creation of two separate charter school authorities. With the increasing importance of charter school education in the District, it is appropriate to examine how this structure functions. We do not in this report address the fundamental issue of whether charter schools should exist. Given the short period in which charter schools have been operating in the District, we think that revisiting that issue now would be premature. Nor do we address the substance of what must—or may—be taught in charter schools, or applicable academic or curricular standards. Moreover, as several studies have made clear, it is too soon to answer the most important question related to charter schools—have they improved public education for public school children in the District of Columbia?212 However, after four years of charter school operations, there is now a clear need to review the processes relating to overseeing and financing charter schools in the District of Columbia, and on elements in the operation of charter schools themselves. We have found it useful to focus on three underlying goals of the District’s charter school laws and systems: accountability, autonomy, and competition. Accountability. Charter schools are public schools. They receive government funding, are not allowed to charge tuition, must enroll students regardless of their ability to pass tests, and operate with the permission of and under a set of guidelines established by the government.213 The two charter school laws require the District government to hold charter schools accountable for meeting the terms of their charters—including an agreed upon curriculum and goals for student academic achievement—and for complying with other provisions of the law related to, for example, financing and special education. Because charter schools operate with less oversight than traditional public schools and without the support services provided by the school district, the charter school laws also

the charter school facilities allowance) in District of Columbia Appropriations Act, 2001, effective November 22, 2000 [Publ. Law 106-522, 114 Stat. 2449 et seq.]. In FY2001, DCPS appropriations include only a small amount ($200,000) of Teachers’ Retirement Fund contributions due to an overpayment in FY2000. In FY2001, DCPS will also receive $12 million in Reserve Funds carried over from FY2000. 212 See, e.g., Jeffrey R. Henig, Thomas Holyoke, Natalie Lacireno-Paquet, and Michele Moser, Growing Pains: An Evaluation of Charter Schools in the District of Columbia, 1999-2000, February 2001 and Jeffrey R. Henig, Michele Moser, Thomas Holyoke, and Natalie Lacireno-Paquet, Making a Choice, Making a Difference? An Evaluation of Charter Schools in the District of Columbia, November 1999. Rigorous performance reviews of D.C. charter schools will begin to take place next year, when the chartering authorities conduct the five-year evaluations of the performance of the first set of charter schools authorized. 213 Charter schools are distinguished from private schools (including those, in some other school districts, that receive government funding – i.e. vouchers) in that charter schools are (1) not allowed to charge tuition; (2) must open enrollment to all students; and (3) operate with the express permission of the government.

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require each charter school to have a board of trustees that will provide governance, oversight, and support to the school.214 Autonomy. A primary difference between charter schools and traditional public schools is that charter schools have much more autonomy. Indeed, a key impetus for the legislation enabling charter schools to operate in the District was the belief that allowing such schools to establish curricula, set academic and non-academic goals, hire personnel, and manage their operations independent from the school district would foster high quality, innovative public educational programs. Apart from the extent of regulatory requirements, charter school autonomy is also greatly affected by charter schools’ receipt of public dollars. As independent entities forbidden from charging tuition, charter schools depend on the per pupil funding that the District government provides to all public schools (charter and traditional) depending on the number and characteristics (e.g., special needs, limited English proficiency) of students enrolled. For charter schools to operate autonomously, the government must disburse public funds in a fair and reliable manner. Competition. Charter schools serve as a source of competition for traditional public schools. Under the District’s per pupil funding formula, whenever a parent chooses to enroll a child in a charter school instead of a traditional public school, the dollars that the traditional system would have expended for that child follow that child to the charter school. By creating a publicly-funded school alternative, charter school legislation anticipates that traditional public schools will no longer be the only educational choice for children whose parents are unable to afford or unwilling to pay for private or parochial school alternatives. The ability of both traditional public schools and charter schools to thrive under this competitive model will be driven to a significant extent, it is thought, by each school’s ability to attract students in the educational marketplace.215 An effective system of competition requires that (1) neither charter nor traditional public schools be inequitably hindered, a concept which requires that each type of school receive equivalent funding, and (2) parents have access to an adequate amount of information to make reasoned decisions regarding the many public schools (charter and traditional) where they can choose to send their children. The research for this report was conducted over the past two years, and included (1) individual interviews and group meetings with charter school operators; (2) meetings with individuals from nonprofit, business, and government organizations with experience operating or working with charter schools; (3) extensive review and analysis of the laws governing charter schools; (4) examination of documents provided by the Public Charter School Board (the “PCSB”), the D.C. Board of Education (the “School Board”), and the

214 Of course, the regulatory system for charter schools should not, given the very purpose and definition of such schools, duplicate the bureaucracy that administers public schools. This issue is not further addressed in this report because it does not appear, based on DC Appleseed’s research, that the regulatory structure in place is unduly restrictive. 215 Although it would be premature to anticipate possible outcomes of this competition, DC Appleseed notes that the competition among these two types of public schools does not presently appear to be a zero-sum game. Both approaches to public education – the centralized traditional public school model and the charter school model – appear viable in a competitive environment, and able to benefit from competition. Of course, individual schools, as distinct from the two models of public education, may not all survive.

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District’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer (the “CFO”); and (5) statutes and data collected from other jurisdictions.216 Chapter I of this report addresses problems caused by the existence of two separate charter school statutes; Chapter II deals with the fact that two separate entities—the Public Charter School Board and the Board of Education—are empowered to authorize and oversee charter schools; Chapter III recommends new procedures for the oversight of charter schools by their own governing bodies—boards of trustees; Chapter IV examines the critical issue of how—given the new public education options available due to the presence of many charter schools—the public can obtain access to adequate, comparable, and accurate information about public schools (both traditional and charter); and Chapter V suggests changes (some already underway) in the procedures for financing charter schools. A brief summary of the report’s conclusions follows. Chapter I: Dual Laws Perhaps the most obvious structural flaw in charter school governance is the existence of two separate statutory schemes governing the creation and regulation of charter schools in the District of Columbia, one enacted by Congress (the “federal statute”) and the other by the D.C. Council (the “District statute”). The presence of dual laws—and the difficulty in reconciling them—has caused needless uncertainty (and controversy) regarding charter school governance, particularly in the area of public school financing. The District ought to have a single charter school law to make government implementation clearer and to facilitate understanding by affected citizens. A recent Congressional amendment to the federal statute does not adequately cure the uncertainty, leaving in place a legal structure that requires those who are affected by or responsible for implementing the law to analyze two separate, and often conflicting, legal schemes. DC Appleseed proposes that the D.C. Council take action to resolve this issue. Specifically, as the legislature most directly responsible for the welfare of District residents, the D.C. Council should take a leadership role by repealing its charter school statute. DC Appleseed endorses the principle of Home Rule, a corollary of which is the right of the District to enact its own laws. With respect to charter schools, however, Congress has stepped in and prescribed laws for the District, leaving the Council with, at most, interstitial lawmaking authority. In that context, a repeal of the District statute would not remove control over the substantive law of charter schools from the D.C. Council—Congress has already done so.

216 A more detailed summary of the report’s methodology is attached as Appendix A. iii 7 Among the significant issues not addressed in this report are challenges charter schools face in gaining access to adequate school buildings and the conversion of traditional public schools to charter status. Policy issues regarding the challenges of addressing the capital and facilities needs of DCPS and charter schools are of considerable concern to the educational community. DC Appleseed did not focus on those issues both because of the ongoing effort by DCPS to develop a master facilities plan for the public schools and the fact that, during the period in which this report was researched and written, there were ongoing negotiations and substantial changes in the rules and procedures for providing charter schools with access to D.C. government property. The sunset of the Control Board and revisions made by the D.C. Council to the rules governing conversions have minimized the need to revise further the conversion procedures at this time.

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Chapter II: Dual Authorities and Oversight Standards Chartering authorities are the governmental entities with primary responsibility for holding charter schools accountable for educating children and spending public dollars. They authorize the creation of charter schools, monitor charter school performance, and sanction (and, if necessary, revoke the licenses of) schools that violate the terms of their charters. Through the exercise of these responsibilities, chartering authorities have the power to affect the well-being of thousands of children in the District of Columbia. Under the federal statutory scheme, the District has established two separate, parallel chartering authorities, each with the power to license, monitor, and take disciplinary action against charter schools. Congress created one chartering authority, the PCSB, for the express purpose of approving and overseeing charter schools. Both the federal and the District statutes empowered the other chartering authority, the existing D.C. Board of Education (the “School Board”), to authorize and supervise charter schools because the School Board had a longstanding role in governing public education in the District and its members were at that time directly elected by District residents. Moreover, local school boards commonly serve as chartering authorities elsewhere in the country. This dual authority structure—similar to that established in one-third of the states that have authorized charter schools—is designed to accommodate competing concerns. The first concern is that involving local school boards in charter school governance is both consistent with democratic principles and likely to facilitate the importation of educational innovations used by charter schools into traditional public schools. The second concern is that giving local school boards sole discretion over the establishment and oversight of charter schools may thwart charter school development, because, it is thought, local school boards will disfavor charter schools. While this is perhaps not a regulatory structure that DC Appleseed would have recommended at the outset, DC Appleseed believes that it would be unwise to change the District’s charter school governance structure at this time. Specifically, the highly-regarded performance of the PCSB together with the fact that the School Board has recently been reconstituted lend hope that the current structure can work effectively. By most accounts, however, the prior School Board previously did not do a good job of fulfilling its charter school responsibilities and was not provided adequate resources to do so. Accordingly, DC Appleseed recommends that the District maintain the current structure for a finite period of time (such as through the end of the 2001-2002 school year), during which both the newly reconstituted School Board and the D.C. Council should assess whether the current structure should be changed. Alterations to charter school governance should be made if suggested by those assessments. In addition, the two authorities should more closely align the standards they use to approve and review charter schools to prevent charter schools founders from selectively applying to one authority based on a lower set of standards.

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Chapter III: Charter School Boards of Trustees: Composition, Timing, and Conflicts Well-functioning boards of trustees at the school level are key to the success of a charter school and to the continued political acceptance of charter school autonomy. The strong visionary and creative forces that the founders of a charter school bring when designing a new school are, alone, often inadequate to see a school through the difficult tasks of establishing, sustaining, and assessing a well-functioning institution of learning. A strong, independent board of trustees can help staff create a workable financial plan, raise funds, secure a practical and safe facility, attract students, and address on-going policy, management, and operational needs. In addition, a multi-member board can act as a check against abuses of public trust. A charter school’s board of trustees, as the governing body of a nonprofit corporation, is ultimately legally responsible for actions taken (or not taken) by the school. A well-functioning board also requires the elimination in fact and of appearance of conflicts of interest on the part of board members, the presence of which can harm both school performance and the credibility of the charter school movement. In the District, many charter schools’ boards of trustees include members with an outside, related interest—including representatives of management companies or nonprofit organizations and school employees. DC Appleseed’s research indicates that many charter schools have inadequate rules governing trustees’ actions when a conflict of interest arises, including both disclosure of possible conflicts and recusal in the event that conflicts are perceived. To provide leadership for charter schools, boards of trustees must be created early in the process of creating a charter school, must be given time between a school’s approval and opening to address critical issues, and must have well-developed conflict of interest rules to govern trustees’ conduct. DC Appleseed recommends the following:

• Each chartering authority should require greater specificity in charter school applications regarding the individuals who will serve on the charter school’s interim board of trustees. Each charter school application should set forth each interim trustee’s qualifications, skills, experience, and organizational affiliations. • Each chartering authority should establish annual application and approval schedules that ensure that at least 12 months transpire between approval of a charter school application and the opening of a charter school. • The law governing charter schools in the District should require that charter school boards of trustees adopt comprehensive policies and procedures relating to conflicts of interest, including disclosure and recusal requirements. • If, at the time a chartering authority approves a charter school application, a charter school’s board contains less than a majority of trustees who have an interest in a sponsoring organization or are employees of the school itself, the charter school’s board should not be allowed later to appoint such a majority without applying to its chartering authority for a revised charter.

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Chapter IV: Information for Parents and the General Public About Schools The provision of adequate, timely, and uniform information about consumer options is a necessary element of any effective system of competition. A central goal of establishing charter schools is to provide parents with the opportunity to choose a school that may be “better” for their children than traditional public school counterparts. Accordingly, it is imperative that parents be provided with understandable and comparable data about public school performance, educational programs, and learning environment needed to make informed choices. Currently, the District fails to provide adequate and comparable information about the public schools (charter and traditional) in which children can be enrolled. Specifically, the information currently available (1) is not detailed enough to permit reasonable judgments, (2) is, generally, not available through means readily accessible to parents with different skills and resources (i.e., during a school fair, in written form, by mail, at a central location, and over the Internet); and (3) is not consistent enough to enable, or provided in a format that facilitates, comparisons between the different types of public schools (PCSB-chartered, School Board chartered, and traditional public schools). DC Appleseed recommends that the District’s newly created State Education Office (the “SEO”) be vested with legal authority for collecting and disseminating data on public schools and that it take several steps to assure the provision of better and more accessible public information, such as:

• Define specifically the information that will be made publicly available to parents regarding all public schools—both traditional and charter. The information should reflect what educators believe correlates to high-quality education and what parents value personally in the public education context, such as: student achievement and other outcome indicators, enrollment/demographic data, learning environment data, curriculum information, and information about the neighborhood within which the school is located. • Define information content and submission procedures in a way that does not create an undue burden on schools. With limited staff, public schools (charter and traditional) cannot easily respond to expansive and multiple information requests. • Information about all public schools should be made broadly available through a concerted public information campaign designed to ensure that District of Columbia residents know where to obtain the school information that they need.

Chapter V: Financing Charter Schools Under a decentralized model, charter schools are not only free from central government control but are also unconnected to many central government systems. In light of their substantial autonomy, the financing of charter schools is particularly important. Without

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an equitable and reliable stream of payments, charter schools will be unable to secure the services they need or plan effectively for the short and long term. While District law provides equitable funding to charter schools through a per pupil funding formula for all public schools, the flow of funding to charter schools has not always been reliable. Over the last five years, the manner of disbursing and the timing of payments to charter schools has been problematic, creating confusion and fostering uncertainty among charter schools. Considerable efforts have been made over the past year by the D.C. Council, Congress, and several District government entities involved in charter school financing to alleviate the problems related to charter school financing. While these efforts represent steps in the right direction, DC Appleseed recommends that the following additional changes be made:

• The D.C. Council should enact into permanent law several amendments to the charter school funding laws previously adopted by the D.C. Council as emergency or temporary measures (which are valid for less than a year). Most importantly, the D.C. Council should make permanent amendments that enable earlier and more frequent payments to charter schools (including a quarterly payment on the July 15th before the school year begins based on projected enrollment). • Enable the chartering authorities to reject enrollment estimates that are clearly inaccurate. Because the first quarterly payment is made before the school year begins, it is based on each school’s estimated enrollment. The chartering authorities should be granted express legal authority to reject such estimates if clearly inaccurate. • The CFO should better describe the enrollment information that the charter schools must report in order to receive disbursements, and should provide to the charter schools more documentation with each disbursement explaining how the amount was derived. • Improve the audit process by providing a method for the charter schools to respond to the auditor’s draft findings. Under the current system, schools are not given an opportunity to provide supplemental information or appeal the auditors’ preliminary findings.

* * *

DC Appleseed believes that this report, while not addressing every systemic issue affecting charter schools, can promote improved public education governance.217 We prepare this

217 Among the significant issues not addressed in this report are challenges charter schools face in gaining access to adequate school building and the conversion of traditional public schools to charter status. Policy issues regarding the challenges of addressing the capital and facilities needs of DCPS and charter schools are of considerable concern to the educational community. DC Appleseed did not focus on those issues both because of the ongoing effort by DCPS to develop a master facilities plan for the public schools and the fact

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report as neither an advocate for nor an opponent of charter schools, but rather as an advocate of a quality public education system. In light of the increasingly significant role that charter schools play in public education in the District, increased attention is appropriate to ensure that these schools provide quality educational opportunities. The changes recommended in this report should further that goal. Two years after the Appleseed evaluation, Mark Schneider and Jack Buckley conducted research comparing parent satisfaction with DC charter schools and non-charter schools. If parent satisfaction is an appropriate measure, the DC charters were more successful than non-charter schools in meeting parent expectations for their children’s schools. Document #18: Mark Schneider (SUNY Stony Brook) and Jack Buckley (Boston College), “Making the Grade: Comparing DC Charter Schools to Other DC Public Schools,”218 Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 25:2 (Summer 2003) Abstract: Across the United States, charter schools have become one of the most frequently used means of increasing choice among educational alternatives. In this article we use data from a recent telephone survey of Washington D.C. parents to evaluate the success of the District’s large and growing charter school program. We find that parents with children in charter schools rate their teachers, principals, facilities and schools higher than their traditional public counterparts. This finding is robust even when controlling for self-selection into charter schools. Based on these empirical results, we argue that the greater satisfaction with charter schools reflected in these differences in grades is not simply the result of the act of choosing. In this article we study parental evaluation of traditional public schools and charter schools in Washington, DC, a city with a large and growing charter school population. Using survey data, we find that parents with children in charter schools rate their teachers, principals, facilities, and schools higher than their traditional public school counterparts. Using a variety of techniques, we show that this finding is robust even when controlling for self-selection into charter schools. The importance of parent satisfaction with charter schools is of considerable importance to current debates about educational reform. Across the United States, charter schools have become one of the most frequently used tools in the nation’s quest to improve education by increasing choice among educational alternatives. As discussed in more detail later, according to its advocates, choice will lead to many benefits that flow from a market-like approach to education. In turn, higher “parent/ consumer” satisfaction with schools of

that, during the period in which this report was researched and written, there were ongoing negotiations and substantial changes in the rules and procedures for providing charter schools with access to D.C. government property. The sunset of the Control Board and revisions made by the D.C. Council to the rules governing conversions have minimized the need to review further the conversion procedures at this time. 218 The work reported in this article was begun with support from the Smith Richardson Foundation and has continuing support from the National Science Foundation. Thanks to Dann Millimet for suggestions regarding the propensity score model.

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choice is one of the cornerstones upon which arguments for the expansion of choice is built. Appearing first in the early 1990s and gathering momentum throughout the decade, charter schools have played an increasingly prominent role in the public education system. As of January 2003, there were almost 2,700 charter schools operating in 36 states (and the District of Columbia) educating over 684,000 students (Center for Educational Reform, 2003).219 One apparent reason for the growth in enrollments is that parents and students think charter schools are better than the traditional public schools in which they were previously enrolled. Finn et al. (1997) found that a large majority of parents felt that charter schools in which their children were enrolled were better than the traditional public schools they left, with respect to class size, school size, teacher attentiveness, and the quality of instruction and curriculum. In contrast, less than 5 % of parents found their new charter schools inferior. Finn et al. also found high levels of student satisfaction across the entire gamut of school attributes, including teachers, technology, class size, and curriculum. Teachers also seem to like charter schools, with high levels of satisfaction found among charter teachers (Koppich, Holmes, & Plecki, 1998). There are several possible foundations for this greater satisfaction with charter schools. Perhaps the strongest is that of “allocative efficiency”—education is a complex, multifaceted “good,” and choice allows parents to select schools that deliver the kind of education they want for their children (Schneider, Teske, & Marschall 2000).220 This link between choice and higher parent satisfaction dates at least as far back as Milton Friedman’s original argument in favor of vouchers in the 1950s (Friedman, 1955). In his pioneering work, Friedman made a strong case for consumer sovereignty, arguing that higher levels of satisfaction with schools will flow from maximizing the freedom of parents to choose schools. From this perspective, choice leads to higher parental evaluation of choice schools because it increases the ability of parents to match their preferences for specific values, needs or pedagogical approaches with the school. As Goldring and Shapira (1993) put it:

“The family sovereignty position suggests choice leads to greater satisfaction in that it accommodates individual family preferences, mainly in the areas of curricula, teaching philosophy, and religion. Parents will be satisfied in exercising their fundamental right of individual choice and freedom of belief about the best education for their children.”(p. 397. Also, for example, Coons & Sugarman 1978; Raywid, 1989).

219 There are many types of school reforms being implemented in the United States today, many of them focused on expanding choice. Among the most popular are charter schools, which are publicly funded schools of choice that typically have fewer restrictions and regulations governing their behavior. In return for this greater freedom, they are supposed to be held more responsible for their performance. For a discussion of the myriad types of choice reforms, see Schneider, Teske and Marschall (2000). More focused on the differences between charter schools and vouchers,t he otherf ormo f choice that is widely discussed today, see, for example, Gill et al. (2001); Hill, Lake and Celio (2002); or Peterson and Campbell (2001). 220 Many of the factors discussed here are associated with choice in general, and have not been developed specifically for charter schools as a form of choice but clearly apply to the charter school option as well.

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In addition to increasing this match between preferences and schools, choice may change the schools themselves making better “products” available for parents to choose among. Indeed, fundamental to the push for choice is the idea that choice unleashes competitive pressure on the schools that makes them improve and charter schools are often seen as a central tool to leverage 204 such change (see, e.g., Teske, Schneider, Buckley, & Clark. 2000; Gill et al., 2001). While the debates still rage about the effect of choice on academic outcomes, there are other outcomes from choice that are less contested and which can increase parental evaluations. For example, many charter schools are designed to change the relationship between administrators, teachers, parents and students, to create what Coleman( 1988) refers to as “functioning communities.” In these communities, the tighter links from the school to parents, families, and students is associated with better educational experiences and all parties, including teachers, are more satisfied (Driscoll, 1993). This link underlies the basic findings developed in the research on “effective schools,” which shows that good interpersonal relations between members of the school community and shared beliefs and values combine to promote good teaching and a positive learning environment (see especially Byrk & Schneider, 2002). Indeed, many charter schools have a culture (and sometimes even a written contract) that provides parents opportunities to influence school management and to become more involved with the processes of school governance and functioning (see, for example, Peterson & Campbell 2001; Finn et al., 1997). To the extent that this does occur, parental evaluations of their children’s’ schools may improve (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Raywid, 1989; Goldring & Shapira, 1993). It is also important to consider that choice seeks not only to empower parents but also to change the role of students, making them more central in the design of education programs and in the functioning of the schools. In short, one goal of choice is to increase the attention paid by schools to student needs (Hill et al., 1997). In turn, choice seems to improve student-teacher relations. For example, in her study of the effects of choice, Driscoll (1993) found that choice students were more likely to report “they got along well with teachers, that the quality of teaching was high, and that teachers praised them and listened to them.” (p. 158). Finn et al. (1997) found that large numbers of charter school students liked the “good teachers” in their schools, who, according to these students, teach until they learn the material and who don’t let students fall behind. To the extent that this behavioral change strengthens the ties between students and teachers and increases the level of student satisfaction with the schools, parental satisfaction with the schools should in turn increase. Finally, choice may put pressure on administrators, teachers and staff to be more “consumer friendly.” As Hassel (1999) observes: “charter schools cannot take their ‘customers’ for granted. Their very survival depends on the degree to which families believe the schools are responding to family preferences and working hard to provide the education they demand.” (p. 6; also see Teske et al., 2000). Thus rather than being isolated from the demands of parents, the competitive pressures on charter schools should increase their responsiveness to parent demands and responsiveness should lead to higher evaluations.

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What Is the Foundation for Greater Satisfaction? While these are all strong reasons to believe that choice should lead to actual improvements in schools that will in turn lead to higher evaluation of schools by parents, there are two related possibilities that provide an alternative explanation. First, the act of choice alone may increase satisfaction. For example, Erickson (1986) argues that parents “who actively choose the schools which their children attend, from among a variety of options, seem far more satisfied with their schools than are parents who simply do the ‘normal’ thing, with little thought.” (p. 105; also see Goldring & Shapira, 1993). For Erickson, the causal mechanism underlying this relationship between choice and satisfaction is related to the investment of energy and time that parents put into choice. Given this investment, even if there are no visible reasons for choice to increase satisfaction, many parents may seek to justify their choice and their investment of resources by selectively gathering and interpreting information about performance and by indicating increased satisfaction with their child’s school—viewing the school through “rose colored glasses.” (Erickson, 1982). Indeed, almost every study of schools of choice, regardless of type of choice and regardless of evidence of improved performance (or lack thereof), has found higher levels of parent satisfaction( see, for example, Bridge & Blackman, 1978; Moe, 2001; Peterson, 1998; Witte, Bailey, & Thorn 1992 on vouchers; Bierlin, 1997 on charter schools, and Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000 on public school choice). Moe also finds that parents who moved to “buy” good schools were more satisfied and argues,” residential choice—the choice of specific neighborhoods or specific schools promotes greater satisfaction.” (Moe, 2001, p. 84). While this is an important argument, using a novel model first introduced as a correction for differential item response in health surveys, Buckley (2002) finds empirical evidence that, in fact, parents who have opted for charter schools in Washington, DC tend to be tougher critics of school qia;out than their traditional public school counterparts. Rather than wearing “rose colored glasses,” charter school parents may in fact be looking at their schools with dark colored ones. Given that studies consistently find an increase in satisfaction among choosers, Buckley’s evidence suggests that the quality choosers perceive in their children’s schools would have to be even greater to overcome their tendency to be more critical than other parents. A second explanation for higher evaluations is that most choice plans are what Elmore (1991) calls “option-demand” choice. In contrast to a system of “universal choice” where all parents must choose, option demand choice consists of a two-stage process. First, parents must “choose to choose”—that is, they must be dissatisfied enough with their existing schools or be sufficiently attracted to an alternative to their neighborhood school that they decide to exercise choice. Once they decide to choose, the parent then has to select among the alternatives to find a school in which to enroll their child.

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Given this two-stage process, the possibility of bias due to self-selection must be taken into account when studying any outcomes of choice. That is, it is likely that the individuals who choose to choose are not representative of the entire population of parents( see, for example, Schneider, Teske, & Marschall, 2000) and the characteristics that are motivating them to choose may affect their subsequent behavior and attitudes toward the schools. To the extent this is true, simple comparisons of choosers and non-choosers are not accurate and the higher evaluations of choice schools found among parents may be a function of the factors that led them to choose in the first place. We address this source of bias in the work that follows. Are Differences in School Evaluations a Function of Self-Selection? We asked a sample of parents in Washington, DC to assign letter grades ranging from A to F for three different aspects of their child’s school: their child’s teacher, principal, and school facilities. We also asked them to assign an overall grade to their child’s school.221 In this article, our task is to assess the extent to which the higher evaluations of DC charter schools we report are robust to the fact that charter schools are option-demand systems of choice and therefore parents who choose to choose may be systematically different than parents who have left their children in the traditional public schools. In the next section, we test the robustness of differences in evaluations by developing three increasingly complex models. Model 1: The naïve model In this simple model, we compare the mean grades assigned to each of the four aspects of the schools we measured by charter school parents and parents with children in the traditional public schools. We call this the naive model since it does not control for any factors that may affect observed differences. Model 2: A standard multivariate regression model In this model, we take into account the fact that parental evaluation of schools may be driven by both a host of individual level factors that have been shown to affect parent attitudes toward schools, such as parent education levels and race, and by school-related factors, such as the size of the school and the child’s grade level. In this model, we also account for the fact that letter grades are not a continuous variable but rather an ordered ranking: that is, while we know the A is better than B and B is better than C, we do not know if the “distance” between A and B is the same as the distance between B and C. Model 3: Controlling for the effects of self-selection As noted, one of the most important problems plaguing comparison of choosers and nonchoosers in an option-demand system of choice is the degree to which observed differences in “outcomes” (in this case, school evaluations) are a function of the fact that certain types of parents may be more likely to become choosers. Given this fundamental problem, we are most concerned with the extent to which the patterns we observe are 221 See Appendix A for a description of the sample and response rates.

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robust to controls for differences between parents who have chosen charter schools versus the rest of the population. This problem is increasingly well-known to social scientists, and a host of models have been developed to control for it. In this article, we use a propensity score matching procedure that we detail later. A caveat about using grades Before proceeding with the analysis, we note that there is a well-known pattern when using grades as measures of parent evaluations of schools—parents almost inevitably give high grades to their children’s schools. For example, Phi Delta Kappa regularly asks a sample of parents to grade their children’s schools. In 2001, 51% of parents gave their own children’s schools either an A or a B—11% gave the grade of A, while 40% gave a B. Note that the grades parents give to their own children’s school are higher than the grades they assign to the nation’s schools as a whole (where only 23% gave grades of A or B). However, we believe that this pattern is not important for our analysis, since we are interested in comparing parents in the charter schools and the traditional public schools in the same city and ultimately we do control for conditions that could affect parents in the two sectors differently. How Do Parents Grade Their Schools? In Table 1, we report the mean scores222 for charter school parents and traditional DC public school parents on each of the four aspects of schools (teachers, principals, facilities and overall) with which we are concerned, and we report the significance of any observed differences displayed for each of the three models we employed (the naive model, the multivariate ordered probit model, and the propensity score matching model). We display all these data in one table for ease of comparison across models, although we will discuss the results by model and then compare across models.223 In the naïve comparison of means, our data confirm the pattern documented in other studies: charter school parents in DC, like parents in other choice programs, evaluate their child’s schools more highly than do parents in traditional public schools. The differences across all four measures uniformly favor charter schools, ranging from about a gain of about one fifth of a grade for charter school principals to about twice that for facilities. In each of the measures, the differences between parents are significant at the .01 level.

222 The survey data are appropriately weighted for probability of inclusion and post-stratified on charter enrollment due to intentional over sampling of this subpopulation. All the models estimated below use the same weights 223 Exact question wording and the marginal responses are provided in Appendix B.

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TABLE 1: DC Charter School Parents Assign Higher Grades to Their Child’s School Than Do Parents Whose Child is in a Traditional DC Public School Dependent variable Model Charter

Mean gradeNon-charter Mean grade

Difference in grade

School grade 1. Naïve difference of means 2. Ordered probit 3. Propensity score matching

3.31 (.06) 3.61 (0.5) 3.30

3.01 (.04) 2.82 (.04) 2.82

.30** (.07) .40** (.01) .48** (.12)

Teacher grade 1. Naïve difference of means 2. Ordered probit 3. Propensity score matching

3.36 (.04) 3.65 (.04) 3.35

3.09 (.06) 3.37 (.05) 2.97

.26** (.07) .28** (.01) .38** (.12)

Facilities grade 1. Naïve difference of means 2. Ordered probit 3. Propensity score matching

3.16 (.05) 3.46 (.05) 3.15

2.78 (.06) 3.09 (.06) 2.71

.38** (.01) .38** (.12) .34** (.12)

Principal grade 1. Naïve difference of means 2. Ordered probit 3. Propensity score matching

3.42 (.04) 3.67 (.04) 3.41

3.19 (.06) 3.41 (.05) 3.06

.22** (.07) .27** (.01) .34** (.13)

Note. N=743 (402 charter, 341 non-charter) Standard errors in parentheses *p<.05, **p<.01 (two-tailed). However, parent evaluations of schools are driven by many factors that could be affecting this simple test. For example, parental satisfaction with schools tends to decrease with education and is also affected by mobility and racial identification (Moe, 2001). In Model 2, we therefore look at the extent to which the difference noted so far hold up to the introduction of such controls. And, as noted earlier, we take into account the nature of dependent variable and use the ordered probit rather than the ordinary least squares estimator. Specifically, we use the method of maximum likelihood to estimate separate ordered probit models (Zavoina & McElvey, 1975).224 The covariates for which we estimate coefficients are:

• charter school, coded 1 if the respondent’s child is in a DC charter school;

224 The ordered probit (or logit) model is a well-known extension of the simple dichotomous probit (logit) econometric model of choice. For all of these models we report not only coefficient values but also the estimated cutpoints (the way in which the data indicate that the logistic function should be partitioned conditional on the data). Note that instead of fixing a cutpoint to identify our models, we instead choose to fix the constant term at zero, thus allowing identification and the estimation of all cutpoints. For details, see Greene (2000).

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• a set of three dichotomous variables for self-reported race( Hispanic, White, other,

with African American the excluded and modal category);

• residential mobility (measured by two variables: the number of years the respondent has lived in DC and the number of years the person has lived in her current neighborhood);

• respondent’s years of schooling, and the squared value of this measure;

• whether or not the respondent was married;

• whether or not the respondent was employed;

• the frequency of church attendance, and

• the grade the respondent assigned to the DC public schools in general.225

The results of the three ordered probit analyses of school, teacher and facility grades are presented in Table 2. As Table 2 illustrates, the coefficient of the charter school covariate is significant for all analyses—parents with children in charter schools rate their schools, their teachers, their principals and their school’s facilities higher, even when controlling for a host of other factors. However it is difficult to tell by simple inspection of a table of ordered probit results exactly how much a given covariate matters or, in our case, the estimated difference in means of evaluations for charter and non-charter parents. To create these estimates, we use the method of stochastic simulation (King, Tomz, & Wittenberg, 2000; Tomz, Wittenberg, & King, 2000) to estimate predicted probabilities and use these to construct mean scores for charter school parents and traditional DC public school parents that we displayed in Table 1. We find that once we introduce controls, the differences between charter school 208 parents and DCPS parents on three of the four measures become somewhat larger than in the naive model.

225 We include this measure as a control for general dissatisfaction with the schools, something that obviously could confound satisfaction with one’s specific school. Since there is a possibility of endogeneity here (time as a charter parent, for example, may change one’s overall rating of the system), we use an additional measure of the length of time that the child has been in the school to divide the respondents into several categories, then perform a Kruskal-Wallis (Kruskal & Wallis, 1952) nonparametric test on the equality of distribution across these categories for both traditional and charter parents. Results suggest that the overall DC schools grade can be considered an exogenous variable.

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TABLE 2 Charter School Parents Assign Higher Grades Controlling for Other Factors: Results of Ordered Probit Models Variable School Grade Teacher Grade Facilities Grade Principal Grade Charter school .59***

(.09).52***

(.10).54***

(.10).45***

(.10) White .03

(.22).16

(.22).40* (.22)

.31 (.24)

Hispanic .38 (.26)

-.24 (.25)

.24 (.22)

.05 (.19)

Other race .01 (.22)

-.18 (.23)

.15 (.23)

.25 (.26)

Years in DC .02 (.01)

.004 (.01)

.018 (.012)

.02* (.01)

Years in neighborhood -.003 (.01)

-.007 (.009)

-.02** (.01)

-.004 (.008)

Years of education -.16* (.10)

-.05 (.10)

-.07 (.10)

-.11 (.08)

Education, squared .01* (.004)

.001 (.004)

.005 (. 003)

.004 (.003)

Married .09 (.11)

-.05 (.12)

-.08 (.12)

.002 (.12)

Church attendance .02 (.03)

.01 (.03)

-.02 (.03)

-.03 (.03)

Employed .11 (.15)

.01 (.15)

-.07 (.14)

-.01 (.15)

DC Schools grade .41*** (.06)

.39*** (.06)

.33*** (.06)

.32*** (.07)

Cutpoint 1 -1.06 -1.59 -1.15 -1.65 Cutpoint 2 -1.04 -1.24 -0.53 -1.30 Cutpoint 3 -0.26 -0.50 0.38 -0.60 Cutpoint 4 .84 .61 1.23 .32 Log-likelihood -879.3 -853.8 -983.0 -840.0 Note: N=743 (402 charter, 341 non-charter) Robust standard errors in parentheses *p<.10, **p<.05, IIIp<.01(two-tailed In Model 3, we test for the degree to which higher evaluations are robust to self-selection effects. As we note above, results from quasi-experimental studies of the effects of public policy (or other “treatments”) are potentially biased when the factors predicting self-selection into the program (here, charter schools) are correlated with the outcome measures (Maddala, 1983). One solution to this problem is the estimate of some form of parametric “treatment effects” model, usually by means of a consistent two-step or full-information maximum likelihood model (for a summary see Greene, 2000; Maddala, 1983). Here we instead use a semi-parametric estimator, propensity score matching, originally introduced by Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983, 1985) in a biometric context and recently applied in econometrics (e.g., Dehejia & Wahba 1998; Heckman, Ichimura, &Todd, 1997; List, Millimet, Fredriksson, & McHone, in press). The logic underlying this method is to construct, from quasi-experimental data, a matched set of treatment and control observations as if a true random-assignment experiment had

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been conducted. By computing the propensities of the respondents to choose to undergo the treatment and then matching individuals with identical scores in the treatment and control groups, a new data set is constructed in which the treatment outcome is exogenous to self-selection. The difference of means for the two groups can then be estimated using several possible techniques. Propensity score matching has several advantages over more familiar treatment effects models, such as relaxation of restrictive parametric assumptions. Moreover, as Dehejia and Wahba (1998) argue, matching provides estimates of the treatment effects more similar to randomized field trials than can be obtained using other corrections for self-selection.226 We follow Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983; 1985) and first estimate a probit model to calculate predicted probabilities of a respondent having a child in a charter school, and then use these values as the estimated propensity score for matching.227 Figure 1, below, presents the distributions of the propensity scores, by charter and traditional enrollment, of the observations we analyze.

Visual inspection of that figure shows a similar distribution, indicating that the matching procedure is successful (Dehejia & Wahba, 1998); we also test that the treatment and controls are balanced by examining the first and second moments of the respective

226 We should note that we did estimate other methods for controlling self-selection, and the results we present are robust to alternative methods and to alternatives election equations. 227 We present the results of our probit model in Appendix C. While every “pretreatment” variable in the equation is related to the propensity to choose, consistent with the demands of the propensity matching procedure, our concern with this probit model is not testing theory but rather to obtain as good a fit as possible. Also note that, due to the limited size of the control population, we sample with replacement, conditional on propensity score.

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distributions of their propensity scores (Becker & Ichino, 2002). After matching on propensity score, we then compare the difference of mean evaluations of this matched set of charter and non-charter parents with a t-test and report our results in Table 1.228 As evident in Table 1, the differences between parents in the two sectors tend to be even larger than in the other models and, again, are statistically significant. The propensity score matching technique simulates experimental methods using the type data more commonly collected by social science researchers. In the next section, we present a final comparison that approaches the “gold standard” of controlled experiments from a direction other than the statistical approach of propensity score matching. Comparing Charter School Parents with Parents Who Sought but Were Denied Access In a well-known series of studies of the effects of voucher programs, Peterson and his colleagues (see, e.g., Greene 2000; Howell & Peterson 2000) randomly assign parents who have applied for vouchers to a “treatment condition” in which parents are given vouchers and to a “control condition” in which parents who sought vouchers are denied them. Since all the parents in these experiments have sought vouchers and their assignment to the treatment and experimental group is randomized, ideally the factors that contaminate so much social science evaluation work, including differences in motivation to seek the “treatment,” cancel out.229 Peterson’s ability to even attempt random assignment was the result of a unique set of conditions, including the fact that the voucher programs he studied were privately financed. Most education reforms do not present researchers this type of opportunity, and given that charter schools are publicly financed and popular among parents and policy makers alike, a carefully constructed randomized field trial is unlikely. However, given that the demand for charter schools in Washington, DC exceeds supply and that charter schools facing excess demand conduct lotteries, there is a population whose motivation to choose charter schools is at the same level of charter school parents (that is, both sets of parents have chosen to choose), but who through the luck of the draw were denied access to charter schools. In our random sample of parents whose child was in the traditional DC public schools approximately 13% of the parents said that they had tried to enroll their child in a charter school but failed. While not as elegant as a fully controlled experiment, we believe that the comparison of charter school parents (who received the “treatment”) and these other parents who sought the treatment but were denied access presents yet another way of controlling for the motivation to choose. In Table 3, we compare the mean grades assigned by these two groups of parents. Table entries are the predicted values of charter parents versus parents denied access controlling

228 Since the propensity scores are estimated quantities, we correct the standard errors via bootstrapping the entire estimation 1,000 times for each analysis. 229 There have been well-known and very intense debates about how well this design has been implemented and about he effects of vouchers, but the value of randomized field trials remains unquestioned

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for race, education, and the other variables we have employed throughout our analysis.230 We see once again that charter school parents uniformly grade all dimension of their schools higher than the control group. TABLE 3 Charter School Parents Grade Their Schools Higher Than Parents Who Tried to Enroll Their Child in Charter Schools but Were Denied Access

Dependent variable Charter Parents Mean grade

Parents Denied Access Mean grade

Difference in grade

School grade 3.20 .11

2.59 .21

.61

.03 Teacher grade 3.37

.122.86 .18

.51

.03 Facilities grade 3.12

.132.48 .19

.64

.03 Principal grade 3.43

.193.06 .21

.37

.04 Note. Number of observations = 450 (402 charter, 48 denied access parents). Entries in the “mean grade” cells are predicted values using stochastic simulation of a model regressing grade assigned on the status of the parent (enrolled in charter school, tried to enroll but denied access), race, residential mobility, employments tatus,m aritals tatus,c hurcha ttendancea nde ducationala ttainment, ando veralle valuationo f DC public schools. All controlling covariates are set to their mean or modal (for categorical variables) values for prediction.S tandarde rrorsi n parentheses. pvalues for the differencesi n means are < .01. While we acknowledge that this comparison, while removing some biases due to self-selection, may introduce new problems if some of the parents denied access are disgruntled with their experience and this affects their judgments. Nevertheless, we believe that the comparison is a useful one—natural experiments such as this are extremely fortuitous and offer another method of triangulating on whether or not true differences in attitudes exist between these groups of parents. Our results lend further support to the argument that the higher evaluations offered by charter school parents are not simply a function of the motivation to choose or of demographic characteristics. The Foundation for Higher Evaluations Is Stronger Than the Act of Choice Alone In this research we asked parents in Washington, DC to evaluate their children’s schools using familiar letter grades. We then compared these grades across parents whose children are enrolled in the DC charter schools with those among parents whose children remained in the traditional DC public schools. We found that, across each aspect of schools we measured, parents in the DC charter schools evaluated their child’s school more highly than did parents in the traditional DC public schools. We employed a series of models of varying statistical complexity to assess the extent to which these findings are robust.

230 If we believed that the lottery process was perfectly random, these types of controls would be unnecessary. However, despite their greater control over the assignment process, Peterson and his colleagues often control for these kinds of demographic factors. In fact, the magnitude, direction, and significance of these differences are virtually unchanged using the “raw” numbers.

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We found strong evidence that parents in the DC charter schools evaluate each and every dimension of their schools we measured significantly higher than other parents. These differences withstand tests for the likelihood that parents who choose charter schools may be systematically different than parents whose children stay enrolled in traditional public schools and that those differences might account for the higher evaluation of charter schools. We believe that our data show that the act of choice alone is not behind the higher satisfaction and higher evaluations we found for charter schools. Obviously we do not know if our results will generalize perfectly to choice populations beyond Washington DC but many of our methods can be easily applied to existing and new studies of parental evaluation of schools of choice. To the extent that other research confirms that there is a foundation for the higher evaluations parents give to schools of choice independent of who is choosing and beyond the act of choosing itself, the finding that choice increases satisfaction, a finding that is central to the debate about school choice, will be moved to far firmer ground. Appendix A: Sample Design and Response Information Telephone interviews were conducted among parents with at least one child in a Washington, DC charter or public school. Interviews were conducted between September 12 and December 11, 2001. All interviews were conducted by the Center for Survey Research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. As a quality control measure, up to 15 callbacks were made per number and an attempt was made to convert all initial refusals. Almost 52% of all interviews were validated on a subsequent call after the interview had been completed. Sample Design Parents were drawn from two distinct samples—an RDD sample of parents with children in charter and public schools and a sample of parents from a list of charter school parents provided by DC charter schools. RDD sample A list-assisted method of random-digit-dialing (RDD) was used to obtain phone numbers in the main state sample. Numbers were purchased from Genesys. Under the list-assisted sampling method, random samples of telephone numbers are selected from blocks of 100 telephone numbers that are known to contain at least one listed residential telephone number. These blocks with at least one residential telephone number are referred to as “1-plus” working blocks. According to Survey Sampling Inc. roughly 40% of telephone numbers in 1-plus working blocks are residences, although percentages are as high as 54% when the blocks are screened for nonworking and business numbers. Charter school

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A sample of charter school parents was drawn from a list of parents in 30 DC charter schools. Not all numbers provided by the schools were valid and numbers that lacked the appropriate number of digits were eliminated prior to sampling. This left a total of 7,389 valid phone numbers for charter school parents. Response Rates RDD sample A total of 24,000 numbers were drawn from 1plus blocks for the main state sample. Of those, Genesys screened out 5,214 or 21.73% as numbers that it detected as nonworking or listed in directories of known business numbers. This left 18,786 numbers that were actually dialed by the Center for Survey Research. Just over 46% of all these numbers (N = 8,734) were coded as non-households. This includes all numbers coded as disconnected, a business, government office, fax, changed number or cell phone. It also includes 1,550 numbers estimated as non-households. These 1,550 numbers are drawn from all numbers that were called 15 times and at which there was ever only a busy signal or no answer (but no answering machine). Based on research by Westat, we estimate that 75% of these numbers are non-households. This number is based on national estimates. There were 2,067 numbers in this category and 1,550 were estimated to be nonworking numbers. This left 9,956 possible households in the sample of phone numbers. Of the remaining households, 6,523 (a total of 941 parents plus 5,582 non-parents or non-DC parents) were successfully screened for the presence or absence of children in DC public or charter schools. This resulted in a screening rate of 62.81% for parenting status obtained by dividing the number of DC parent plus nonparent households by the total number of households in the sample. The total number of parenting households in DC is estimated at 922 or 14.13 % of all screened households. This number omits 264 (245 nonparents and 19 not in DC) households that were coded in at least one contact attempt as parents in DC but were later recoded as nonparents. The status of these numbers is ambiguous and could reflect the actions of respondents to avoid an interview. If all of these numbers are included (probably an overestimate) the incidence of parents in the sample increases to 18.18%. Of those households identified as obtaining a parent of a child in a DC school (N = 922), interviews were completed in 504 resulting in a cooperation rate of 54.66%. This results in an overall response rate in the sample of 34.33%. This response rate is calculated by combining the screening rate for parenting households (62.81%) with the cooperation rate among households identified as parents of children in DC schools (54.66%). Charter school sample Charter school parents were drawn from a list of names provided by 30 charter schools in the DC areas. The sample was self-weighting which means that unequal numbers of parents were drawn from each school. The number of parents selected from a school was directly proportional to the size of the school in relation to all charter school parents in DC. Thus more parents were chosen from large school and fewer from small schools. This ensures that the final sample represents parents in charter schools across the DC area. The sampling fraction was 29.63% or just under a third; parents were drawn in successive random waves from the lists. There were 7,389 parents listed (after bad numbers were culled from the lists) and 2,189 numbers were included in the sample.

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Of the total 2,189 numbers, just over 23% of all numbers (N= 522) were coded as non-households. This includes all numbers coded as disconnected, a business, government office, fax, changed number or cell phone. It also includes six numbers estimated as non-households. These six numbers are drawn from all numbers that were called 15 times and at which there was only a busy signal or no answer (but no answering machine). There were 24 numbers in this category and 18 (75%) were estimated to be nonworking numbers. This leaves 1,667 possible households in the sample of phone numbers. Of the remaining households, 1,321 (a total of 811 parents plus 441 nonparents and 69 non-DC parents) were successfully screened for the presence or absence of children in DC public or charter schools. Given the messy status of the sample, we assumed that numbers were not associated with parents of students in charter schools until an interviewer verified this. This resulted in a screening rate of 79.24% for parenting status, obtained by dividing the number of DC parent plus non-parent households by the total number of households in the sample. Of those households identified as containing a parent of a child in a DC school (N = 811), interviews were completed in 510 resulting in a cooperation rate of 62.89%. This results in an overall response rate in the main sample of 49.83%. This response rate is calculated by combining the screening rate for parenting households (79.24%) with the cooperation rate among households identified as parents of children in DC schools (49.83%). Appendix B: Survey Questions and Responses Here we present the question wording for the grade questions, as well as the raw (unweighted or otherwise adjusted) response percentages for the three comparison groups discussed earlier. As noted, the number of observations is 402 charter, 341 non-charter, and 48 denied access. The four school grades were asked sequentially in the same battery of questions introduced with: “First, we are interested in finding out what you think about [respondent’s child’s name]’s school?” “Children get grades all the time in school. But how would you grade [respondent’s child’ s name]’s school?”

TABLE B1 School Grade (%)

Charter Non-charter Denied AccessA 48 39 33 B 39 36 33 C 9 17 15 D 3 5 8 F 1 4 10

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“How would you grade [respondent’s child’s name]’s teachers?”

TABLE B2 Teacher Grade (%)

Charter Non-charter Denied AccessA 52 43 35 B 33 36 33 C 12 14 21 D 2 5 4 F 2 3 6

“What about the school building itself. What grade would you give it?”

TABLE B3 Facilities Grade (%)

Charter Non-charter Denied AccessA 49 33 23 B 28 29 27 C 16 24 31 D 5 9 15 F 3 4 4

“How would you grade the principal?”

TABLE B4 Principal Grade (%)

Charter Non-charter Denied AccessA B C D F

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Appendix C: Results of Probit Model Used for Propensity Score Matching

Variable Coefficient (SE)

White -2.22 (.53)

Hispanic -0.32 (.36)

Other race -0.44 (.36)

Years lived in DC .01 (.02)

Years lived in neighborhood -.003 (.01)

Married .04 (.18)

Years of education 1.27 (.39)

Years of education squared -.04 (.01)

Employed .10 (.19)

Church attendance -.06 (.04)

DC school grade -.35 (.07)

Constant -10.38 (.08)

Log-likelihood -235.04Probability > chi-square >.01Percent correctly predicted 93.2%

Note: Number of Observations = 743

REFERENCES

Becker, S. O., & Andrea, I. (2002). Estimation of average treatment effects based on propensity scores. The Stata Journal 2(4), 358-377. Bierlin, L. (1997). The charter school movement. In D. Ravitch and J. Viteritti (Eds.), New Schools for a New Century, (pp. 37-60). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bridge, G. R., & Blackman, J. (1978). A study of alternatives in American education Family Choice in Schooling Series, Vol. 4. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Buckley, J. (2002). Rose-colored glasses or choosy consumers? A new approach to measuring parent satisfaction with charter schools. Retrieved September 26, 2002 from http://www.sinc.sunysb.edu/Stu/sbuckley/rg02.pdf . Bryk, A. &, Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Center for Educational Reform. (2003). Charter school highlights and statistics. Retrieved June 2, 2003 from http://edreform.com/pubs/chglance.htm . Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

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Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94 Supplement: S95-S120. Coons, J. E., & Sugarman, S. D. (1978). Education by choice: The case for family control. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dehejia, R. H., & Wahba, S. (1998). Propensity score matching methods for nonexperimental causal studies: NBER Working Paper No. W6829. Driscoll, M. (1993). Choice, achievement, and school community. In E. Rassell and R. Rothstein (Eds.), School choice: Examining the evidence, (pp. 142-172). Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Elmore, R. F. (1991). Public School Choice as a Policy Issue. In W. T. Gormley (Ed.), Privatization and its alternatives, (pp. 55-78). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Erickson, D. (1982). The British Columbia story: Antecedents and consequences of aid to private schools. Los Angeles, CA: Institute for the Study of Private Schools. Erickson, D. (1986). Choice and private schools: dynamics of supply and demand. In D. C. Levy (Ed.), Private education: Studies in choice and public policy, (pp. 82-109). New York: Oxford University Press. Finn, C., Manno, B. V., Bierlin, L. A., & Vanourek, G. (1997). Charter schools in action: Final report. Washington, DC: Hudson Institute. Friedman, M. (1955). The role of government in education. In R. A. Solo (Ed.), Economics and the public interest. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved July 8, 2003 from http://www. schoolchoices.org/roo/fried1.htm. Gill, P., Timpane, M., Ross, K., & Brewer, D. (2001). Rhetoric versus reality: What we know and what we need to know about vouchers and charter schools. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. Goldring, E. B., & Shapira, R. (1993). Choice, empowerment, and involvement: What satisfies parents? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 15, 396-409. Greene, J. P. (2000). The effect of school choice: An evaluation of the Charlotte Children’s Scholarship Fund. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Civic Report 12. Retrieved October 10, 2002 from http://www.manhattaninstitute.org/html/cr_12a.htm#t3 . Greene, W. H. (2000). Econometric Analysis. (4th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Hassel, B. C. (1999). The charter school challenge. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Heckman, J. J., Ichimura, H., & Todd, P. E. (1997). Matching as an econometric evaluation estimator: Evidence from evaluating a job training program. Review of Economic Studies 64, 605-654. Hill, P. L., Pierce, L., & Guthrie, J. W. (1997). Reinventing public education. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hill, P. T., Lake, R. J., & Celio, M. B. (2002). Charter schools and accountability in public education. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Howell, W. G., & Peterson, P. E. (2000). School choice in Washington, DC: An evaluation after one year. Cambridge, MA: PEPG 00-08, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, Harvard University. King, G., Tomz, M., & Wittenberg, J. (2000). Making the most of statistical analyses: Improving interpretation and presentation. American Journal of Political Science 44(2), 347-361.

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Koppich, J., Holmes, P., & Plecki, M. L. (1998). New rules, new roles? The professional work and lives of charter school teachers. Washington, DC: National Education Association. Kruskal, W. H., & Wallis, W. A. (1952). Use of ranks in one-criterion variance analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association 47, 583-621. List, J. A., Millimet, D. L., Fredriksson, P. G., & McHone, W. W. (In press). Effects of environmental regulations on manufacturing plant births: Evidence from a propensity score matching estimator. Review of Economics and Statistics. Maddala, G. S. (1983). Limited dependent and qualitative variables in econometrics, Econometric Society Monographs. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Moe, T. M. (2001). Schools, vouchers, and the American public. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Peterson, P. E. (1998). School choice: A Report Card. In P. E. Peterson and B. Hassel (Eds.), Learning from school choice, (pp. 17-19). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Peterson, P. E., & Campbell, D. E. (2001). Charters, vouchers, and public education. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Raywid, M. A. (1989). The Case of Public Schools of Choice, Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappan Education Foundation (Fastback# 283). (ERICE D 307 689). Rosenbaum, P., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika 70, 4155. Rosenbaum, P., & Rubin, D. B. (1985). Constructing a control group using matched sampling methods that incorporate the propensity. American Statistician 39, 33-38. Schneider, M., Teske, P., & Marschall, M. (2000). Choosing schools: Consumer choice and the quality of American schools. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Teske, P., Schneider, M., Buckley, J., & Clark, S. (2000). Does competition from charter schools improve traditional public schools? Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Civic Report number 10. Retrieved October 10, 2002 from http://www.manhattaninstitute.org/html/cr_10.htm . Tomz, M., Wittenberg, J., & King, G. (2003). CLARIFY: Software for interpreting and presenting statistical results 1.2.2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Witte, J. F., Bailey, A. B., & Thorn, C. A. (1992). Second Year Report: Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs. Zavoina, R., & McElvey,W . (1975). A statistical model for the analysis of ordinal level dependent variables. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 4, 103-120.

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Epilogue: On January 2, 2007 37-year-old Adrien Fenty became the youngest person to have served as mayor of Washington, D.C., and among the youngest mayors in the country. Soon after his inauguration he made known his intention to seek mayoral control over the DC Public Schools and, in preparation for doing so, spent time with Richard Daley in Chicago and Michael Bloomberg in New York City. Although Fenty’s proposed reorganization of Washington school governance has yet to receive the blessing of Congress, he is moving forward rapidly to revamp the system. Alex Hemmer describes the process for us. Document #19: Alex Hemmer, “The Pride of His City? Adrian Fenty and Mayoral Leadership in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools,” Unpublished paper for PLSC260, “Public Schools, Politics and Policy,” Yale University, December 2007. 1. Jonathan Jonathan Lewis is nineteen years old. In 2000, he was an average twelve-year-old: a mentor to his friends with a B average, he won first place at his sixth-grade science fair. He sang with the D.C. Boys Choir and played Little League. Today, Jonathan mostly hangs with friends. He shops, watches music videos and plays video games. He started with “Super Mario Bros.” and graduated to “Grand Theft Auto.” Now he’ll play “Madden NFL” four hours a day. He doesn’t get high, but he smokes Newports, and his vodka of choice is Belvedere. In May, for the second time in two years, Jonathan sat out his high-school commencement exercises. On the day that his mayor officially took over Washington, D.C.’s ailing public schools, Jonathan’s friends—members of the Calvin Coolidge Senior High School Class of 2007—crossed the stage that yawned between them and their respective futures. Some miles away, sitting at home, Jonathan played “Madden” while his mother filled out an application for summer school. Over the course of several months in early 2007, Washington Post reporter Lonnae O’Neal Parker followed Jonathan around Coolidge, transposing his story into the pages of the newspaper, a living example of the ways in which D.C. schools fail D.C. children, and vice versa.231 Jonathan told Parker he could see his future clearly: graduation, college, business. But what Jonathan’s story suggests, and what decades of statistics can only begin to describe, is that the social contract between students and schools has been broken in all kinds of ways in the District of Columbia. Today, a system that has been struggling for over forty years is in the first throes of a much-needed overhaul. It is too late for Jonathan Lewis, largely; his story has been told. But there are 60,000 more, though that number drops each year. Coolidge is in many ways a microcosm of D.C.’s failing schools: In 2006, it was neither the District’s best high school nor its worst, but it is full of hope and frustration all the same. Built in 1940 in Northwest Washington, Coolidge gained a solid academic reputation and became a school of choice for the black middle class after desegregation. I. 231 Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “Will Jonathan Graduate?” Washington Post, November 10, 2007.

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Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s lawyer graduated from Coolidge, as did one federal and two Superior Court judges. The citywide graduation rate is about 60 percent, but roughly three-quarters of Coolidge seniors have graduated each of the past three years. Generations of alumni cheer at Coolidge sporting events and donate time and money. But by 2005, the school had entered a decline. With the proliferation of charter schools, enrollment had slipped to the 600s after at one point topping 1,000. Although Coolidge is in a solidly middle-class area, more than half of its students come from out-of-boundary, drawn by athletics or fleeing bad schools in their neighborhoods. More than half of the students receive free or reduced-cost lunches. And there were physical problems: leaking roofs, asbestos, no central air or heat. Most clocks were broken. A new principal, a Coolidge graduate himself, hired eight new teachers that year—four D.C. Teaching Fellows and four Teach For America corps members. This fall, Coolidge had uniforms, six new AP classes, a parent-teacher resource center and a new track.232 Such progress—raising standards, developing resources, and renovating facilities—is at the heart of a push towards fixing the District’s schools once and for all, a push spearheaded by D.C.’s new mayor, the brash, populist Adrian Fenty, 37 years old. In the mold of Chicago’s Richard Daley and New York’s Michael Bloomberg, Fenty has staked his political reputation on the postulate that the District’s ailing public schools can be fixed through a combination of grit and management. Fenty’s story is one of a political success, if an uneven one; over the course of 2006 and 2007, he navigated the racially charged waters of the District of Columbia to build the consensus needed to personally shoulder the responsibility for its schools. But Fenty’s fledgling reform raises questions about the relationship of those politics to the policies he and his controversial new schools chancellor must design and build, all the while maintaining the forward motion needed to keep a tentative political coalition alive. Surrounding this balancing act are broader questions of the viability of mayoral control as a tool for reforming schools, questions that likely cannot be answered with the rough draft of Fenty’s history. In a school system worn down by waves of change, Fenty’s process has been a passionate, reflective one, marked by its successes and its failures. To investigate it is to examine both politics and policy through the lens of Jonathan Lewis, emblematic of the students who pass through the District’s schools each year and sometimes never emerge. 2. Four Decades of Failed Reform Adrian Fenty took over the Washington, D.C., school system in June 2007, a short five months after he was sworn in as the District’s youngest-ever mayor. The New Republic’s Peter Beinart would call him a ‘new Progressive’: popular, with an ideology of pragmatism and the core conviction that “cities can dramatically alleviate seemingly endemic urban afflictions without a massive redistribution of wealth.” 233 Beinart’s article about the ‘pride of the cities’ traces its roots to the late 1990s and cities with more stable

232 Lonnae O’Neal Parker, “For Jonathan Lewis, It’s Fourth and Goal,” Washington Post, November 12, 2007. 233 Peter Beinart. “The pride of the cities.” The New Republic.

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political traditions; Fenty’s rhetoric is populist rather than technocratic, bearing the marks of a history in which the District of Columbia’s residents have felt more oppressed than empowered, and his approach seems designed to keep him on a shorter leash than his peers’. Such, perhaps, are the scars of Washington, D.C.’s tumultuous history. Reforming the District’s schools, though, is a task that would daunt even the most adroit of Beinart’s new Progressives, men (thus far) for whom pragmatism is ideology. Earlier this year, a team of Washington Post researchers sifted through NEAP data to develop conclusions about the District’s public schools as specifically compared to their urban equals. 234 The results are stunning: Washington, D.C. public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with the poor children of those areas. The District spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation; more shockingly, anecdotal and quantitative accounts suggests that most of that money never reaches the classroom. In 2006, just over half of teenage students attended schools that meet the District’s definition of “persistently dangerous” because of the number of violent crimes. Fenty’s ascent is a remarkable one, as are the challenges he faces in turning around a public school system plagued by problems—abysmal test scores, dysfunctional management systems, decaying buildings—that have been identified and targeted, but never corrected, by one would-be reformer after another. The District’s grim educational history is full of political stagnation and opposition, but also of good-hearted attempts at reform that simply went nowhere. Once, in the early part of the 20th century, the District of Columbia was regarded as having a model urban school system. In the aftermath of Brown v. Board, though, large-scale white flight destabilized the system, and the de facto re-segregation of D.C. schools that quickly occurred caused it to unravel.235 The emerging consensus among the city’s largely African-American population, disenfranchised for decades by the federal government and now offered a paltry bone of a Supreme Court decision, was that the schools had been better off segregated, when black leaders had made decisions for black schoolchildren. In June 1967, a federal judge finally ordered the District’s white-dominated, federally appointed school board to halt practices that discriminated against African American children. “I think this means a bright future for the poor black boys and girls in the school system,” a jubilant Julius Hobson, the civil rights leader who initiated the lawsuit that led to the ruling, said at the time.236 He soon joined the District’s first elected school board. But the bright future that Hobson envisioned was not to be, for reasons that demonstrate the District’s heartbreaking history of racial and political rifts. In 1968, D.C. residents were allowed for the first time in the twentieth century to elect representatives to a local governing body, the school board. It took six years for Washingtonians to earn the right to elect their own mayor and city council, and in that time—particularly for D.C.

234 Dan Keating and V. Dion Haynes. “Can D.C. Schools Be Fixed?” The Washington Post, June 10, 2007. 235 Steven J. Diner. Crisis of Confidence: The Reputation of Washington’s Public Schools in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: University of the District of Columbia. 236 Burt Solomon. The Washington Century (New York: William Morrow, 2004), 165.

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African-Americans—the board became the only conceivable instrument of democratic control, and the only determinant of political clout, patronage, and social status.237 As corruption trickled into the system, rifts began to emerge—between the board and the council, the board and the federal government, and most noticeably between the D.C. intelligentsia and the lower- and middle-class residents.238 In the 1980s, national reports on urban schools spurred a reform movement. A group of 64 District business and community leaders released a comprehensive study in 1989 of deteriorating conditions in the schools. 239 The D.C. Committee on Public Education, or COPE, made sweeping recommendations, from auctioning off underused properties to lengthening the school day. More significantly, the group of community leaders criticized the District’s decade-old curriculum, one of the first in the nation to detail and test what children should know at each grade level, as outmoded. It was abandoned—but not replaced. For the next fifteen years, the District lacked a comprehensive plan for how to teach and test core subjects such as reading and math, and the schools only deteriorated. Attempts at reforms proliferated, but few seemed to have any impact. In the 1990s, a lawsuit intended to pressure District politicians to pay for fixing fire code violations instead led to the shutdown of schools and contributed to the departures of two superintendents.240 Lawsuits meant to push the schools to better serve special education students wound up forcing the system to spend about $120 million a year to pay private tuition for 2,400 students out of a system of 55,000, plus $75 million for special education transportation. That left less money to fix the inadequate special education programs that sparked the lawsuits in the first place.241 In 2000, D.C. voters narrowly approved a referendum radically altering the structure and mode of selection of the city’s school board, giving then-mayor Anthony Williams a stronger formal role in school governance. As in several other large cities that had moved in that direction—and as his successor, Adrian Fenty, would echo six years later—Williams’ rationale for restructuring was framed in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. But the vote was anything but unanimous, exhibiting a sharp racial cleavage that Columbia political scientist Jeffrey Henig quantified by comparing the “yes” vote to the racial composition of 150 city precincts. The two variables displayed a correlation of 0.95: the more heavily African-American the precinct, the more likely its residents were to vote “no” on the referendum granting Williams a modicum of control over the board.242 The reconstituted school board met with mixed success: Over its six-year lifespan (it was essentially obviated by Fenty’s 2007 reform bill) the board witnessed the arrival and departure of three superintendents. The consulting firm McKinsey and Co. was called in 237 Jeffrey R. Henig. “Washington, D.C.: Race, Issue Definition, and School Board Restructuring,”in Mayors In The Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, ed. Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 199. 238 Ibid. 239 April Witt, “Worn Down by Waves of Change,” The Washington Post, June 11, 2007. 240 Ibid. 241 Ibid. 242 Henig, 194.

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twice to develop comprehensive management reform plans; the first was never implemented. Henig suggests that the starkly divided results of the 2000 referendum explain a certain degree of stagnation associated with the restructured board; as Rudolph W. Giuliani would attest, too, hybrid boards have a peculiar habit of serving too many masters to be accountable to any.243 Interestingly, though, Henig also postulates that the results themselves are explained by the differing ways in which Washington’s Caucasian and African-American communities viewed the city’s history as explained by its messengers of change:

The key, instead, appears to lie in the credibility and trustworthiness of the message and messengers as differently judged by different sectors of the audience. And, while the race of the listeners was a powerful determinant of response, the race of the messengers ultimately was less critical than the extent to which their narrative aligned with familiar and compelling beliefs and the personal legitimacy they could claim by virtue of their own past records.244

Henig’s primary target is Fenty’s direct predecessor as mayor, the bow-tie-clad Anthony Williams, who had labored in obscurity as the city’s treasurer under previous mayors. For many of D.C.’s louder African-American voices, Williams, who was not a Washington native, felt inauthentic; Henig argues that he was unable to tell the District’s story in a way that would allow him to build the political consensus needed to reshape the schools. That task would have to fall to a more credible, connected source: Adrian Fenty. 3. Fenty Fenty was 34 years old when he announced his bid for the mayoralty, the youngest candidate for that position in thirty years of D.C. home rule. By the time he ran for mayor, he had served the District’s fourth ward as its elected representative for just over four years, developing a reputation as a highly responsive ward politician and a charismatic figure, as comfortable in the poor, black neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River as in the white, wealthy ones west of Rock Creek Park. Fenty cast himself as an engaged and energetic politician dedicated to a “vision of a better, more inclusive city,” who would prioritize the urban poor—and fix their public schools.245 As the mayoral race progressed, it quickly became clear that education had soared to the top of the city’s political agenda. In a survey put out by Fenty’s office, almost 60 percent of those polled said education was the city's biggest problem, followed by housing at a distant second.246 Fenty and his chief rival, city council chair and establishment candidate Linda Cropp, rose to the challenge, developing plans that each called for some version of a mayoral takeover. Cropp’s was ameliorative in intent, in some ways similar to the New Jersey state government’s approach to its own failing schools: She proposed to ask the council and Congress for authority to take over public schools whose test scores dropped below federal standards five years in a row. Fenty’s was perhaps more remarkable not for its content but for the degree to which it sought to emulate his would-be peers: “If you 243 Henig, 210. 244 Henig, 209, emphasis mine. 245 Lori Montgomery, “It’s Official: Fenty Is Running For Mayor,” The Washington Post, June 2, 2005. 246 Lori Montgomery, “Education Becoming Top Issue For D.C.,” The Washington Post, May 26, 2006.

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do it, you do it the Bloomberg model,” Fenty told the Post, “where you establish [a] department of education and run the system.”247 This tendency to seek out best practices, to actively and publicly develop policies based on successful equivalents in other cities, would prove to be one of Fenty’s hallmarks as a leader. Beinart, in his New Republic piece ten years prior, cites it as a characteristic of what he describes as a ‘new Progressive’ mayor:

They speak to each other regularly, they cite each other without prompting, they copy each other’s initiatives. In almost every case, they represent a radical break with their predecessors in office, and that break is largely about managing city government efficiently in the public interest rather than using it as a mechanism for arbitrating competing group interests.248

And Fenty was doing so in an increasingly public way: Even as a candidate, he grew accustomed to informing the Post of upcoming trips to other cities, inviting reporter Lori Montgomery to Baltimore on the first stop of an erstwhile listening tour. “I believe all the key issues remaining in the D.C. government can be solved with aggressive follow-through,” Fenty told Montgomery, standing in front of machinery that Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley used to track the progress of individual agencies.249 Beinart would certainly have nodded his assent. Fenty’s leadership benefited at least in part from his opponents’ progressivism. At a debate over education in August 2006, he came off as more moderate than his eventual record would suggest. Fenty suggested that, if elected, he would appoint a deputy mayor for education, and eventually seek to close or restructure underperforming schools—hallmarks of the mayoral takeover, but significantly less radical steps than those proposed by two of his rivals. Cropp went further, promising that she would not seek a second term as mayor if a schools turnaround failed; council member Vincent B. Orange, Sr., announced that he would seek a full takeover of the school system. Fenty came off as progressive, but not radical; meanwhile, the terms of the debate began to shift towards immediate change. Washington is an overwhelmingly Democratic city; when Fenty won a decisive victory over Cropp in the September party primary, it was widely and correctly assumed that he would coast to the mayor’s office in November. Fenty’s victory was largely attributed to three factors: the door-to-door campaigning he had dedicated himself to for 15 months, the widespread perception that he would bring principles of accountability and pragmatism to City Hall, and what had become, by that time, an almost single-minded focus on reforming the District’s ailing public schools.250 On the heels of his primary victory, Fenty began to signal that he was contemplating a more sweeping transformation of the school system than he had previously discussed. D.C. voters, he told the Post, “want to see the next mayor do more than ‘tinkering around the 247 Ibid. 248 Beinart, 16. 249 Lori Montgomery, “For Guidance, Fenty Turns To A Neighbor,” The Washington Post, August 3, 2006. 250 David Nakamura, “Fenty Overpowers Cropp In Contest for Mayor,” The Washington Post, September 13, 2006.

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edges.’”251 Doing so would spark an inevitable but unspoken conflict with the current superintendent, Clifford R. Janey, hired only two years prior and lauded for his efforts to develop the District’s first set of learning and accountability standards since those discredited in the 1980s. But Janey was also criticized for a collegial style that bordered on indecisive, and a predilection for developing rather than implementing his ideas. Fenty, hardly known for his even temper, had criticized Janey in the past for moving too slowly.252 It was becoming increasingly clear that the 58,000-student system was in a state of crisis. In 2005, only 19 percent of city schools—28 of 146, and five of 40 charter schools—had met the modest reading and math standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. Worse, the system was leaking: A combination of strong private and suburban schools and a burgeoning system of charters had reduced the student population—and with it, the federal funding—from 80,000 in the late 1990s to 58,000 at the time of Fenty’s election, with many of the defections representing the city’s most promising students. And Fenty was growing increasingly certain—buttressed in large part by the advice of New York’s Joel Klein, who would eventually pen a Post op-ed supporting him—that mayoral control was the beginning of the solution. In an ironic twist for the education board that had once seemed the city’s only source of political clout, voters approached the booth in November uncertain if their elected school board representatives would ever cast votes at all.253 On the eve of Fenty’s November election, Post editorial board chair Fred Hiatt, writing for himself, explored the heated topic of Fenty’s proposed takeover in a pair of columns. Raising a chain of connected issues—speed, structure, ambition—Hiatt concluded by focusing on the potential relationship between the decisive Fenty and the methodical Janey: “Is there a marriage waiting to happen, in which the mayor infuses his sense of urgency into the superintendent's measured reform plans? That may depend on the answer to the biggest question of all: Once Fenty gets hold of the schools, what does he intend to do with them?”254 One week later, Hiatt directed Fenty’s attention to Boston, where Thomas Menino’s takeover attempt—operating on the principles of stable leadership, mayoral commitment, and a smooth working relationship between mayor and schools chief—had succeeded politically but had met with only modest achievements in the classroom: “Only 16 percent of Boston's fourth-graders test proficient or better in reading, and only 22 percent do so in math.”255 In true form, Fenty responded by visiting Menino in Boston, signaling simultaneously a willingness to engage with his critics (though Hiatt’s tone was hardly negative) and an eagerness to address the policy ramifications of his takeover. It was a typical move: Politically shrewd and managerially sound, Fenty was engaging all sides with the hope of building consensus and developing best practices. Crucial to his attempts at bridge- 251 David Nakamura and Lori Montgomery, “Fenty Poised to Reach for D.C. School Reins,” The Washington Post, September 17, 2006. 252 Ibid. 253 V. Dion Haynes, “D.C. Foes Fighting For Shaky Ground,” The Washington Post, October 8, 2006. 254 Fred Hiatt, “In Tackling Schools, Fenty Will Be Tested,” The Washington Post, October 23, 2006. 255 Fred Hiatt, “A Case Study For Washington’s New Mayor,” The Washington Post, November 6, 2006. It is worth noting, as Hiatt does, that these numbers were a 10-percent improvement on Boston’s old scores, and a 5-to-10-percent improvement on Washington’s current scores.

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building was a rhetoric of local service: By planning a schools takeover, Fenty maintained, he was responding the widely expressed will of his constituents. And in promising a role in governance to the city council, giving members line-item control of the budget, he was promising to share a key element of responsibility with his political rivals. In a way that his predecessor had never been, Fenty was embodying what Michael Kirst describes as sensitivity to “how local context and civic culture determine whatever outcomes ensue.”256 In Henig’s terms, he was simply a better storyteller—and, as racially charged as such an observation may be, he felt like a more genuine representative of an African-American community with a troubled past. Over the objections of newly elected school-board president Robert Bobb, Fenty’s approach won the allegiance of a majority on the city council, and the approval of Hiatt and the Post editorial board. Critics remained: Bobb, elected on a more conservative change mandate, advocated a slower approach to school reform and a more prominent role for the board he led.257 Post columnist Colbert I. King, who would remain a thorn in Fenty’s side, worried that Fenty’s team was focused overly much on governance, and not at all on the classroom.258 Each, in some ways, encapsulates a persistent political-science debate over the validity of mayoral takeovers: Bobb’s over the insulation of education policy from the rough-and-tumble of mainstream electoral politics, and King’s over the reliance on governance changes as a panacea. It is hard to answer such criticisms with data, though each will be touched on again below; it is notable, though, that each played a role in eventually shaping Fenty’s approach. When the council was asked to vote on Fenty’s bill in April 2007, they incorporated provisions leading to greater authority for the board. And King’s persistent criticisms, alongside the best efforts of the Post’s reporting team, consistently pushed Fenty to translate politics into policy. Still, Fenty has been accused by many of moving too fast on his way towards reform. His unconventional nominee for schools chancellor, TFA alum and headhunter Michelle Rhee, was eventually accepted by the council as embodying the principles of reform that Fenty had stood for; her selection process, though, was lambasted as secretive and divisive.259 Equally as troubling to many were signs of overkill in Fenty’s emulative approach to policy-making; in May, only a month before officially taking control of the schools, the Post discovered that Fenty’s deputy mayor for education had lifted sections of his takeover proposal verbatim from a similar document drafted by reformers in Charlotte, N.C.260 To evaluate proposals from other policymakers in search of the best seemed to many the model of 21st-century governance; to copy them word-for-word seemed, understandably, somewhat sloppy. In many ways, Fenty’s schools team, by now identified strongly with the energetic Rhee, has succeeded in melding politics and policy as they set about addressing the challenges of 256 Michael Kirst, “Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance,” paper presented to the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, May 2002. 257 Robert Bobb, “Let Voters Decide on D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, April 3, 2007. 258 Colbert I. King, “What Never Seems to Change for D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, February 1, 2007. 259 David Nakamura and Nikita Stewart, “More Criticism Over Fenty’s Secrecy,” The Washington Post, June 13, 2007. 260 David Nakamura, “District Copied Schools Strategy,” The Washington Post, May 9, 2007.

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the District’s school system. At the end of July 2007, a month before school started, Rhee announced that half of D.C. public schools would not have all their required textbooks and half of the school buildings would not have any air conditioning on the first day of school—“conditions,” the Post remarked, “as traditional in the city as back-to-school shopping for a new box of crayons.”261 The city’s leaders were quick to paint the problem as an inherited one, and their disposition as both displeased and ready to rumble: “The chancellor and I are completely disgusted by what we find,” Fenty announced, and planned a visit to the warehouse where textbooks sat, languishing. True to form, he invited a Post reporter with him; the next day, the paper’s editorial board weighed in, noting that it was the first time since 1989 that a D.C. mayor and a head of the school system had visited the warehouse.262 Yet as the lines between politics and policy have blurred in recent months, some have begun to question the mayor’s priorities, and whether it is possible to serve both masters. A second Post reporter—a non-beat reporter—returned to the warehouse to discuss the crisis more thoroughly with the facilities manager, who expressed his doubts that the system was facing a widespread shortage. That conclusion was echoed by the D.C. parents association, and by some principals, who reported “the smoothest delivery in years.”263 Few accused Rhee, who had measured textbook shortages using a somewhat crude survey, of intentionally reporting fuzzy numbers, but the incident drew more to note that, as Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote, “the hardest part in school reform is the soft stuff.”264 And in recent weeks, Fenty and Rhee have been accused of the opposite sin: tackling ambitious reforms without first building the necessary political consensus. In a moment reminiscent of the New York schools panel’s ill-fated revolt against Michael Bloomberg, city council members on November 29 yelped in protest at the abruptness with which Fenty and Rhee announced that they would consider closing 24 schools by summer 2009.265 In many ways, this unfolding drama recaptures the tension and the magic associated with mayoral takeovers themselves—the sudden moves, the realignment of power bases, the horrified sense of fait accompli. And it may truly be a miscalculation on Fenty’s part: Unlike in New York, it is not entirely clear if the mayor’s office does have the authority to make such sweeping decisions, and doing so may cost Fenty the consensus he has so carefully built. In late August, though, Post columnist Fisher recalled, in a brilliant, anecdotal sense, the reason Fenty had received his mandate:

As I wandered outside an elementary school one evening last week about 8 p.m., a worker who was trying to get new windows installed scurried past me.

“Working late,” I said.

261 Nikita Stewart, “Clouds Gather Over D.C. Schools,” The Washington Post, July 31, 2007. 262 “Many Textbooks Left Behind,” The Washington Post, August 8, 2007. 263 Debbie Cenziper and Dan Keating, “Not on the Same Page Over Textbook Needs,” The Washington Post, August 24, 2007. 264 Marc Fisher, “Three Reasons to Cheer for Rhee's Fast Start,” The Washington Post, August 28, 2007. 265 Theola Labbé, “Short Notice on Plan to Close Schools Angers Council,” The Washington Post, November 29, 2007.

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“Clock's ticking, man,” he said. “Whole new world now.”266 4. The Pride of His City? The New Republic’s Peter Beinart describes the ‘new Progressive’ mayors, a category to which Adrian Fenty certainly belongs, as follows:

They have an ideology: that cities can dramatically alleviate seemingly endemic urban afflictions without a massive redistribution of wealth, that the way to achieve this is by using competition to make city services radically more efficient, and that cities must tolerate diverse identities without celebrating them to the detriment of a shared sense of public interest.267

But Beinart goes on to describe the historical circumstances that led to the rise of these men in ways that deeply resonate in the history of Washington, D.C.: It was the civil rights generation mayors, he writes, who paved the way for the reformers. By calling for federal initiatives for urban economic development, incorporating African-Americans into local government, and uniting those two ends in one, they indirectly contributed to their own demise. “In both psychological and material ways,” he writes, “the dream of a second national war on poverty probably kept mayors from demanding more of their own city agencies.”268 When the coalitions that elected those mayors fell apart, the voters’ appetites for pragmatic reforms were whetted. Out went Marion Barry, in came Adrian Fenty—and in a more authentic way than Anthony Williams had ever provided. But Beinart’s commentary is more descriptive than prescriptive, and does little to answer those critics of mayoral takeovers who deride them as little more than an institutional Band-Aid attempting to cover up far deeper problems. Is Adrian Fenty, as Beinart would suggest, the pride of his city, or merely symptomatic of the latest craze in governance reform? There is little data available to support either contention, little science to back up Fisher’s sense of progress or King’s of regress. In 2002, Michael Kirst performed a multi-city study on the impact of mayoral control, classifying each urban takeover by its level of mayoral influence and the impact that governance changes had on schools. The conclusions he was able to draw were marginal at best: “It is not possible to link many changes in school policy and practice to changes in governance,” Kirst writes.269 He cites Mayor Joe Serna of Sacramento as a low-influence mayor—one who merely supported a slate of school-board candidates—whose decisions were widely viewed as having a positive impact on Sacramento education. On the other hand, Oakland’s Jerry Brown introduced a hybrid education board and has seen only meager results. Still, Kirst notes that other researchers have reached more positive, if tentative, conclusions about the impact of mayoral takeover. Regardless, offering a mayor the mantle of leadership cannot be seen as a panacea. Institutional reforms can only facilitate policy decisions, not make them, and the question

266 Fisher, op. cit. 267 Beinart, 16. 268 Beinart, 20. 269 Kirst, 8.

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that remains in Washington, D.C., is whether Adrian Fenty’s will achieve a meaningful impact on the everyday lives of students and teachers. In announcing his candidacy for the mayoralty, Fenty pledged to usher in “a new era where we no longer judge ourselves on the dark times of the past, but against what we want our future to look like.” To do so, he will have to demonstrate to the children of the District of Columbia that they have a future indeed. The recent record has been mixed, if promising: In Chicago, Richard Daley has had a significant impact on schools and students scoring below the 15th percentile on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. In New York, Michael Bloomberg has won plaudits—and criticism—for eliminating the corruption that once plagued the school system. Having studied these cities, having met with these mayors, Adrian Fenty understands the delicate balance of politics and policy that plagues any attempt to forge change in a system long let down by its leaders. As Jonathan Lewis knows, though, time is ticking.

REFERENCES In drafting this paper, I consulted over 100 Washington Post and Education Week articles from the period of June 2005 to December 2007. Those articles are too numerous to be listed here by name; those with direct facts and statistics have been cited above. Beinart, Peter. “The Pride of the Cities.” The New Republic, June 30, 1997. Cibulka, James. “Old Wine, New Bottles.” Education Next 1, no. 4 (2001). Diner, Steven J. Crisis of Confidence: The Reputation of Washington’s Public Schools in the Twentieth Century.

Washington, D.C.: University of the District of Columbia, 1982. Henig, Jeffrey R. “Washington, D.C.: Race, Issue Definition, and School Board Restructuring.” In Mayors

In The Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 191-218.

Henig, Jeffrey R. and Wilbur C. Rich. “Governance Structure as a Tool, Not a Solution.” In Mayors In The

Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 249-266.

Hess, Frederick M. Spinning Wheels: The Politics of Urban School Reform. Washington, D.C.: Brookings

Institution Press, 1999. Kirst, Michael and Katrina Bulkley. “‘New, Improved’ Mayors Take Over City Schools.” Phi Delta Kappan

82 (2000), 538-546. Kirst, Michael. “Mayoral Influence, New Regimes, and Public School Governance.” Paper presented to the

Consortium for Policy Research in Education, May 2002. Meier, Kenneth J. “Structure, Politics, and Policy: The Logic of Mayoral Control.” In Mayors In The Middle:

Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools, edited by Jeffrey R. Henig and Wilbur C. Rich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 221-231.

Solomon, Burt. The Washington Century: Three Families and the Shaping of the Nation’s Capital. New York:

William Morrow, 2004.

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A Washington Post article last spring noted that “demand for the District of Columbia's charter schools is at a high—enrollment has risen an average of 13% annually since 2001. If the trend continues, more students will attend charter schools than traditional public schools by 2014, according to one study…Charter schools account for a quarter of the District's public school enrollment, an expansion financed in part by an annual allocation from the city that has reached $260 million, or 32% of the city's spending on schools. The District is one of the few places in the country where charter schools receive money for facilities on top of per-pupil funding for operating expenses.”270

In May, “[Chancellor Michelle] Rhee detailed plans…for overhauling 26 academically troubled schools, saying she will replace principals and teachers, hire private education-management firms and install instructional programs to boost student achievement…Seventeen of the 26 schools are slated to get new principals or teachers, the option that gives Rhee the greatest amount of control…Five schools will be run by an outside management firm, and seven will work with an alternative plan. Rhee opted against converting the schools into charters or turning them over to the state education office, saying she wanted to maintain control of them.”271

• • • Suggested Study Group Questions:

a. What is the problem(s) for which charter schools are proposed as a solution? b. Public opinion polling suggests that charter schools are regarded much more favorably than school vouchers. What might account for that difference? c. Among the arguments favoring school choice are the following:

(1) “Market I,” (Milton Friedman272) which argues that bad schools will only improve when parents are able to abandon them for better schools; market competition is the only effective driver for school improvement. (2) “Market II,” (John Chubb and Terry Moe273) which argues that private schools are more effective than public schools because there is less bureaucracy involved in their administration. Students should be allowed access to these superior schools, but the market needs to be constrained by insuring equal funding for participants and non-participants in a choice program, extra funding for those with special needs, and government monitoring to insure quality and non-discrimination.

270 Washington Post, April 27, 2008 271 V. Dion Haynes and Bill Turque, “Chancellor Outlines Plan for Overhaul; Most Facilities Face Staffing Changes, Washington Post, May 16, 2008. 272 Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979) 273 John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1990)

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(3) The “voucher left,” (John Coons and Stephen Sugarman274) which argues that vouchers are a means of insuring funding equity and equal access. (4) School choice as a “rescue operation” (Arthur Levine275) --a “quick fix” for those who are least well served by public schools.

In what respects do these arguments apply to charter schools?

4. What was the problem(s) for which charter schools were proposed as a solution in the District of Columbia? To what degree have charter schools in the District of Columbia solved the problem for which they were proposed as a solution? 5. The casebook contains several reports evaluating charter schools and (in some instances) comparing them to non-charter schools. Were you to go about evaluating the relative success of charter schools, what would be your research design?

Appendix #1: DC Charter Legislation

Authorizing Legislation for D.C. public charters schools passed by Congress on 04/26/96: D.C. School Reform Act of 1995, as amended (P.L.104-134, 104-194, 105-100; D.C. Code §31-2853.11-.25 & §31-2853.41-.43) is available on the Web at http://www.dcpubliccharter.com/communityint/legislation/legislation.htm

Appendix #2: Last year’s clarifying questions 1. Have any studies been done to analyze test scores from specific types of charter schools, such as excluding vocation schools? Not to my knowledge. 2. Do charter school budgets vary significantly from typical public school budgets, such as in their allocations for teacher salaries, administrative costs, textbooks, etc.? Following are two budgets for school year 2007-08, one from Montclair Public Schools, the other from the Francis W. Parker Essential Charter School in Harvard, MA:

274 John E. Coons and Stephen D. Sugarman, Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (Berkeley: University of California, 1978). 275 Arthur Levine, “Why I am Reluctantly Backing School Vouchers,” Chapter 22 in Robert Wassmer (ed.) Readings in Urban Economics: Issues and Public Policy (New York: Blackwell, 2000)

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Montclair Parker Instruction 61.2%Administration 9.1

82.7%276

Total 69.3 82.7Support277 17.6 5.0Plant 9.7 9.7Extra-curriculars 1.8 2.6

3. Are there any explicit instances of public schools modeling curriculum and pedagogy after those at a charter school? The Achievement First model seems likely… Kafka and Sherman cite two instances of the latter: “There are two ways in which this “exemplar effect” may have occurred in New Haven. Amistad used to run professional development classes for teachers in other New Haven schools. A number of public schools in the district also seemed to have adopted another of the tenets of the Achievement First approach: measuring student performance every six weeks with Interim Assessment tests.”278 There is an excellent overview279 of the transfer of best practices from charter schools to conventional public schools that covers Connecticut charters extensively and includes references to studies in other states as well. The Massachusetts Department of Education has a Charter School Dissemination Grant Program designed to disseminate best practices from charter schools to conventional public schools. A description of projects funded with these grants is available on the MDOE Web site.280 4. Where do “competitive authorizers” exist? Have they been compared to traditional charter authorizers in terms of their charter-granting activity? We saw one example of “competitive authorizers” in DC with the DC Public School Chartering Board and the DCPS Chartering Board—one operated by Congress, the other by the district. Those board have been merged by Fenty, though final approval of the move is pending. What Frederick Hess is talking about in Document #6 (Casebook p. 50) is competition between organizations initiating charter schools. He argues that institutions such as universities have their reputations on the line with the success or failure of their charter schools and are thus more likely to hold their schools more directly accountable than are agencies such as school districts or state chartering authorizers. “Competitive authorizers” exist wherever there are “strong” charter laws. 5. Are there any instances of interdistrict charter schools—that is, ones that draw students from outside whatever district the charter school is located? Many state charter schools enroll students from multiple districts. The Francis W. Parker Essential Charter School in Massachusetts

276 The Parker budget does not differentiate its salary and wages figure as between instruction and administration. In part this is because virtually every administrator in the school also teaches. 277 In the Parker budget, this includes such items as contract services, legal and accounting services, printing, copy and postage, student transportation and supplies. The Montclair budget does not provide detail for this category 278 Kafka and Sherman, “Charter Schools in Connecticut and New Haven” (Research paper for PLSC240, March, 2008). 279 Judith Lohmann, “Charter Schools and Public Schools,” (Connecticut General Assembly, OLR Research Report 2005-R-0096, 2005) Available at http://www.cga.ct.gov/2005/rpt/2005-R-0096.htm 280 http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/dissemination/default.asp?section=3

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(see question #3 above) is an example.281 Interdistrict charters in Connecticut include the Side-by-Side Community School in South Norwalk,282the Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication in New London,283 and the Jumoke Academy in Hartford.284 6. How many charter schools in D.C. have been closed? How many have been closed for academic reasons? Thirteen as of last year. The Center for Education Reform does not specify the reasons for school closings and I am unable to locate that information elsewhere.

281 The school’s Web site is found at www.parker.org 282 www.sidebysideschool.org 283 http://issacschool.org/ 284 http://jumokeacademy.org