King: Arbitrary caps on charter schools 'don’t make sense'

WASHINGTON — U.S. Education Secretary John King on Wednesday weighed in on a swirling schools controversy, criticizing what he called “arbitrary caps” on the growth of high-quality charter schools, publicly funded but, in many cases, privately operated K-12 schools in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

Appearing at the National Press Club, King said the USA is “fortunate, I think, as a country, to have some high-performing charters that are doing a great job providing great opportunities to students — charters that are helping students not only perform at higher levels academically, but go on to college at much higher rates” than students at similar neighborhood public schools. “That’s good. We should have more schools like that, and I think any arbitrary cap on that growth of high-performing charters is a mistake.”

But King, whose rise is closely aligned with charter schools, said charters that are under-performing should “either improve or be closed.”

King’s opposition to a limit on charter schools — at least the high-quality ones — puts him at odds with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Meeting in Cincinnati on Saturday, the civil rights group’s board approved a resolution calling for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools. It also called for stronger oversight, saying they shouldn’t take on more students until they’re “subject to the same transparency and accountability standards as public schools.”

The NAACP also wants charter schools to stop expelling hard-to-educate students, among other measures.

The resolution comes as charter schools in a few places have come under criticism for allegedly weeding out difficult students — in one case, The New York Times reported last year that a high-performing Brooklyn charter school, part of a larger network, maintained a “Got to Go” list of students that administrators wanted out, and that neighborhood schools would be forced to accept. The network later said the list was a mistake and that the principal who maintained it was reprimanded.

Whether charter school discipline nationwide is problematic remains something of an open question. Critics have pointed to remarks by King himself, who has criticized charter schools for harsh discipline — the U.S. Department of Education even created a #RethinkDiscipline campaign “to support initiatives that build positive school climates and develop less punitive approaches to school discipline.”

But other research has shown no evidence of “push-out” effects.

Researchers looking at charter schools' academics have come away with mixed results, finding last year, for instance, that students in Texas charter schools saw less progress in both math and reading than their peers in district schools.

But other research has suggested that charter school students get more instruction in these basic subjects than other students — the equivalent of 36 more days of reading and 26 more days of math.

“For many of these students, charter public schools may be the only option for a quality public education in their community,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a D.C-based support group.

Rees said she was “obviously disappointed” with the NAACP resolution, which “seems to ignore the increasingly positive impact charters have had in communities of color across the country over the last 25 years.”

She suggested that despite the rhetoric, families are voting with their feet: charter schools now serve nearly three million students, 700,000 of whom are African-American. And nearly 1 million students are on charter school wait-lists around the country, she noted. “These families are looking for something better for their children now and shouldn’t have to wait even longer.”

The NAACP’s move follows a 2014 resolution opposing “privatization of public schools and public subsidizing or funding of for-profit or charter schools.” Though a few charter schools are operated by for-profit management organizations, many are run by non-profits, though they can often solicit contributions from donors in ways that public schools can’t. The result, in many cities, is a group of schools with deep-pocketed supporters that most public schools can only dream of.

Voters in Massachusetts next month will also be voting whether to give the state authority to lift a cap on charter schools.

During Saturday’s NAACP meeting, about 140 protesters who had traveled to Cincinnati from Memphis disrupted the proceedings, forcing hotel management to call police.

Protest organizer Sarah Carpenter, a grandmother of 13, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that the group wants “good schools of any type. Where was the NAACP when so many public schools were failing our children?"

NAACP National President Cornell William Brooks said the resolution “does not call for the doomsday destruction of all charter schools in existence now. What it does call for is let us have a season of reason, a pause in the expansion while we figure this out."

Secretary King, who was born in Brooklyn to African-American and Puerto Rican parents who were both educators, cut his teeth in the charter school world. In between earning degrees at Harvard, Yale and Columbia, he taught high school social studies in Puerto Rico and Boston and co-founded Roxbury Prep, one of a growing number of “no excuses” charter schools. King later helped found Uncommon Schools, a New York-based charter school chain that has grown to nearly 50 schools.

On Wednesday he said states must take a more prominent role in vetting charter school quality.

When charters perform poorly, he said, some states “fail to take action to either improve them or close them, which is the essence of the charter school compact. Charter schools were supposed to be a compact — more autonomy in exchange for greater accountability. And yet some states have not followed through on that compact.”

But in states with better oversight, he said, schools that “are doing a great job for kids, that want to grow, they should be able to. I think this is an issue where we’ve got to put kids first. We’ve got to ask what’s best for the students and parents.”

He added, “Arbitrary caps don’t make sense. We should not limit kids’ access to great opportunities.”

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