The Little Policy that Could: How a Few Schools are Changing American Education

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

Claudia Rebanks Hepburn

American education is changing. The old, intransigent bureaucracies are starting to experiment with new schools and programs, they are beginning to copy effective teaching methods, and some are even responding to parental concerns. What can have brought about such a change in attitude? Competition, of course.

Eight years ago, public-school competition was born when the first charter-school legislation was enacted in Minnesota. Today, of the 80,000 public schools in the United States, about 1,400 are charter schools. This small, new, controversial movement is having a disproportionate effect on the country’s public school systems. Evidence suggests that this simple policy innovation may one day be credited as the little engine that saved public education.

Charter school legislation allows the formation of independently managed, publicly funded schools that operate under contract with the school board or state. Freed from regulatory red tape, charter schools are held accountable both by the families who choose them and by their charter contract. Many have earned excellent reputations by responding to a local demand for a special program, or by using innovative methods to help ordinary children make extraordinary academic progress. But these successes, of vital importance to charter school students and their families, are minor in comparison to a much greater charter school accomplishment: revitalizing the schools around them.

Seven studies have assessed the effect charter schools have had on their surrounding school districts. Six of these show that charter schools have had a "ripple effect" on surrounding public schools;1 in only one did local school boards resist any "pressure from charter schools to change the way they do business."2 American public education is changing, and there is little doubt that charter schools are influencing that change.

A recent report from the Center for Education Reform3 supplies examples of how the charter-school ripple effect has touched education in 15 states. The more important of these ripples seem to fall into three categories: a new attitude towards regulations and competition, a new desire to respond to families’ needs, and a new emphasis on efficiency.

This new attitude, adopted by many school districts since charter schools were introduced, is striking. Many superintendents, principals and teachers who once strenuously opposed charter schools are now proponents of deregulation and competition. The new superintendent of the Washington, DC schools has responded to charter-school competition with an ambitious reform plan to revitalize the troubled system, and if she succeeds she will give parents good reason to choose DC non-charter public schools over her new competitors. "Competition is healthy," she says. Her reforms include new school budgets based on student enrolment, new academic standards for students, and the publication of statistical profiles for each school.

The efficiency of charter schools has made several school boards recognize that their bureaucracies are impeding school performance. As a result, school districts in California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin have started their own autonomous or semi-autonomous schools, responsible for their own management and results. These are called "pilot" schools in Boston, "contract" schools in Houston, and charter schools in other districts.

Competition from charter schools has also made school districts more likely to respond to families’ needs. Michigan’s Hartland school district, concerned with the loss of children to charter schools, wrote to all the families that switched to a charter school and requested their thoughts about how their public schools could improve. The school board in Durham, North Carolina, also surveyed parents to determine why they moved their children to a charter school. The Board’s chair, Kathryn Meyers, admitted that "many charter school students were, for whatever reason, not successful in the Durham Public Schools. If these same students are successful in a charter public school, I need to know how and why. Maybe we can apply some of the same practices in our schools… I need to know what works."4

Rather than surveying parents, school districts usually just watch to see what innovative programs and techniques work well at charter schools and attract families to them. The examples of this happening across the country are too numerous to cite, but they include phonics reading programs, International Baccalaureate programs, individual study programs and programs for autistic students. School districts have also imitated such practices as extending the school day, communicating with parents more often, emphasizing foreign languages, offering more after-school programs, and rewarding innovations made at the school level.

In many cases charter schools have simply roused the public school systems to act on the good ideas they have had for some time. Some school districts contemplate innovations for years before they are put into place. The threat that a charter school will beat them to it has induced the delivery of a few overdue programs. This was the case in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, where the school district finally acted on its long-considered plan to offer an International Baccalaureate (IB) program - only after the Rocky Mountain Charter School began registering students for its own IB program. Similar examples have been recorded in New Jersey, Arizona, and Massachusetts.

Finally, charter schools have made some public school districts focus more on their students’ academic results. The Los Angeles school district, which has the most charter schools in the state, recognizes the effect charters have had on the way the school district does business. Charter schools have made the school board "move away from focusing on process to ensuring outcomes," Deputy Superintendent Ron Prescott says. The superintendent, Ruben Zacarias, now tells his principals they can use any teaching methods they like, "just show me the reading scores!"

In Milwaukee, charter schools and voucher programs developed in the early 1990’s in response to a failing public school system. In a city where as few as 20 percent of inner-city black students graduated from high school, and the average high school student graduated with a D+ average, illiteracy and school drop-out rates had become a critical public problem.5 The academic advantage of charter-school and voucher students moved the school board to make some long-needed changes. The district now offers not only additional programs, more choice among district schools, and its own charter schools, but also a guarantee: all second grade students will be provided a tutor if they do not read at grade level. Such an infusion of creativity and competition into Milwaukee’s education system was long overdue.

The benefits of charter school competition have already turned many foes - in school boards, union headquarters, and classrooms - into loyal defenders of this new movement. As it grows, the effect of charter schools on surrounding school districts will grow, too, and, perhaps one day, competition and collegiality will spur all schools toward an innovative, disciplined, and accountable system of education. Until then, charter schools will be mapping the territory.

Notes

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

info@fraserinstitute.ca You can contact us at the above email address for any comments or information requests. Please report any dead links or technical problems.

If you know someone who would be interested in this web page, please enter their email address below, and we will forward this URL to them: Email Address:

Last Modified: Friday, October 22, 1999.