“Well-run charter schools have been a lifeline for many families.” That ought to have been the thesis for a recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times. Instead, it was just a sentence buried within a lengthy, misleading portrayal of California charter schools.
The Times editorial, drawing from a study produced by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Southern California chapter and the nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization Public Advocates, used data from a few outlying schools to paint a picture of bias and discrimination in charter schools’ admissions processes. It is a mischaracterization that flies in the face of the actual mission and impetus for most charter schools.
Charter schools are one of the few bright spots in California’s otherwise underperforming public education system, and many have been designed specifically to improve education in minority communities and low-income areas. We should be celebrating charters and aggressively increasing the number of charter schools available to the public — not attempting to make them more like traditional public schools.
Why not? Well, for starters, our current traditional public education system is failing our kids. Fewer than half of students attending public school in the Golden State are proficient in English and math. Only 49 percent of students in California are proficient in English, and only 37 percent are proficient in math, according to data released Wednesday by the California Department of Education.
Also troubling is the achievement gap in proficiency between black and Latino students versus their Asian and white counterparts. In English, only 31 percent of black students and 37 percent of Latino students scored proficient, compared to 64 percent of white students and 76 percent of Asian students. And the proficiency percentages for math are more worrisome: 18 percent for black students, 24 percent for Latino students, 53 percent for white students and 72 percent for Asian students.
It’s no wonder some education reform advocates call public education the civil rights issue of our time.
Test scores aren’t the only metric for judging the success of traditional public schools, though. College preparedness and acceptance are also useful indicators. When comparing the data between traditional schools and charters, the contrast is telling. For example, 20 percent of all charter school applicants were accepted to University of California schools, compared with only 14 percent of non-charter students.
Also, charter schools are helping to even out the achievement gap between ethnicities. Data analyzed by the California Charter School Association showed that 19 percent of Latino and African American charter school applicants were accepted to UCs, compared with just 11 percent for Latino and African American students attending traditional schools. And a higher percentage of African American and Latino charter students apply to UCs, compared to traditional public school students, 35 percent versus 19 percent.
Perhaps most consequentially, a higher percentage of low-income students from charter schools are being accepted into UCs than from traditional public schools: 21 percent of low-income charter school applicants were accepted to UCs, compared with just 11 percent of low-income traditional school applicants.
Something is clearly working at charter schools that is not working in traditional schools.
Despite increased spending on traditional public education and programs to increase its quality, the system is leaving too many students behind.
Proponents of the current public school system argue that schools need more money. But consider how much money our state spends on public education each year for kindergarten through 12th grade. California will spend $51.2 billion on K-12 education this year — more than 40 percent of the state’s general fund budget — according to the Department of Finance. “Overall spending for California public schools is about $76.6 billion when federal funds and other funding sources are added,” according to the California Department of Education’s website.
The groups and individuals typically opposed to charter schools and other types of reforms are those with vested economic interests in maintaining the status quo of the current public education system. That’s why they attack public charter schools. It’s unfortunate to see the L.A. Times, the ACLU and Public Advocates give credence to, and parrot, the arguments of special interests opposed to reasonable education reforms.
Of course, no charter school — or traditional public school, for that matter — should put absurd hurdles that could disadvantage the admission of low-income and minority kids, and those that do should absolutely be held accountable. But let’s not be irresponsible by trying to paint the entire charter school system as having bias, or the potential for bias, when we know this is patently false.
Also, instead of singling out charter schools, why not do an analysis of the entire public education system in the same way the ACLU and Public Advocates studied charter schools? The Times’ conclusion, based on the study, was that “the state has done a terrible job of requiring stringent oversight of these [charter] schools.” What about the terrible job the state has done in the oversight of traditional public schools — for decades? After all, that is where the largest number of students are educated.
Let’s apply the same standards to all public schools in California’s education system and ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions. Here is one to start with: Is it discriminatory to determine a child’s school by the neighborhood or ZIP code in which he or she lives (i.e., by their socioeconomic status)?
Progress, reform and modernization are desperately needed in our faltering K-12 public education system. Charter schools are not a silver bullet, but they are helping because they are more innovative and nimble than their traditional school counterparts, have more local control and input over the approach to teaching and learning and are more accountable directly to the communities and families they serve.
Let’s find ways to expand the charter approach and make traditional public schools more like charter schools — not the other way around.
Brian Calle is opinion editor for the Southern California News Group.
