Resisting the temptation to meddle in the
affairs of public charter schools is like sticking to that New Year’s resolution
to cut a few calories and eat healthier. When you decide to have a salad for
lunch instead of a cheeseburger, you cannot shred some cheese on top and then
slather your lettuce and tomatoes with ranch dressing. After all that, you may
as well just have the cheeseburger. This week, the state Board of Education
discussed expanding the role of the Michigan Department of Education to allow it
further regulatory authority over charter school authorizers. The result will
likely be to limit public school academies’ autonomy to such an extent that
there will be no discernable difference between them and conventional public
schools.
The MDE has a legitimate role in ensuring
that no student suffers from abuse or neglect in school. Moreover, the MDE can
help to monitor the responsible expenditure of public funds. In fact, charters
already face extensive oversight, answering to their boards, their authorizers
and the state superintendent. Ultimately, however, for the charter school
movement to prove successful, these alternative schools need the freedom to do
what they, not the MDE, feel is best for kids.
Education markets can only lead to quality
educational opportunities when there is both choice and competition. In order
for there to be choice, parents must have quality alternatives available. For
competition to be legitimate, excessive barriers to entry into the market cannot
interfere with supply.
To earn a charter — or operating contract —
a potential public school academy must gain the approval of an authorizer, which
itself has been authorized for this purpose by state law. In Michigan,
authorizers include public universities, community colleges, K-12 school
districts and intermediate school districts. In exchange for greater freedom
from all of the regulatory burdens facing conventional public schools,
authorized public school academies generally agree to meet stricter performance
standards. Since charter public schools operate at public expense and are in the
business of caring for children, it is reasonable to argue that they should go
through a formal approval process before opening their doors. Thus, the first
line of defense against particularly poor potential public school academies is
that they must meet the standards of the authorizers. This process cannot be
unduly restrictive, however, as innovative schools need the opportunity to enter
the market.
The second and most important check on
charter public school quality is parental choice. For parental choice to operate
as a quality control mechanism over public school academies, we must assume two
things. First, we must operate under the assumption that parents tend to know
what is best for their children. Next, we must ensure that parents have
information about the performance and attributes of the available schools. By
helping to ensure the proper public reporting of charter and conventional public
school characteristics, the MDE can play a role in supporting informed parental
choices.
Parental choice operates as a quality
control mechanism against public school academies of inferior quality because
such institutions will ultimately go out of business if they are not providing
quality educational programs. Supplied with information about school
performance, the same parents, who had chosen a given charter public school as
an alternative to the conventional public school, will no longer send their
children to a low-quality school. Without students, inferior public school
academies will fail, but it is this freedom for public school academies to fail
which is precisely what drives them to perform and to respond to parental input.
Some state Board of Education members have
stated that we cannot trust the authorizers to monitor everything about public
school academies; fortunately, we don’t have to. According to the Center for
Education Reform, 25 unsuccessful charters have closed in Michigan since 1993,
when the movement began here. Whether it is because of the oversight of the
authorizers or because of schools’ inability to meet parental standards, quality
controls over public school academies appear to be operating with relative
success.
For public school academies to be a viable
educational alternative, the state Board of Education and the MDE need to stick
to their diet. Governments, like waistlines, have a tendency to expand, but
letting existing authorizers and parents act as quality control mechanisms is
the only healthy way to preserve the quasi-market reform of public school
academies, which approximately 100,000 students in Michigan have currently
chosen to attend.
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Marc Holley is a doctoral fellow at
the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform and an adjunct fellow
with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute
headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is
hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.
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