Editorial: Moratorium
Takes Choice Away From All RI Schools
7/28/04
By
Robert Pilkington
The General Assembly's
moratorium on new charter schools has drawn its fair
share of reaction and outrage. In a slew of recent Providence
Journal articles and opinion pieces authored by Journal
reporter Linda Borg, columnist Julia Steiny, Ron Wolk
of EdWeek magazine and Cathy Kaiser (chairwoman of the
Jamestown school committee) the issue has been given
terrific statewide coverage. As a League of Charter
Schools it is gratifying to serve as the catalyst of
this lively debate and to witness the demonstration
of passionate concern for the health of public education
shown by all parties. As the educational vanguard and
as laboratories designed for the benefit of public education,
charter schools are once again serving as the state's
educational Petri dish.
On the face of things, one would think that Rhode Island
has many more pressing educational matters than the
mere one and a half percent of the state’s public
school children enrolled in our charter schools. But
as models for public education, charter schools are
rightfully serving as the frontier of a vigorous debate
on future policy trends regarding hard issues such as
equity in state aid to education, site based governance
vs. school committee governance, inter-district parental
choice, statewide public school transportation, and
the effect of non-profit sponsorship of public schools.
The recent moratorium has simply, and once again, focused
attention on these hotly debated issues.
The moratorium on charter school growth is noteworthy
not only because of the immediate and deleterious effects
on schools currently being planned, but also because
of the lost opportunity for genuine school reform by
traditional school districts. Additionally, as Ms. Steiny
and Mr. Wolk correctly observe, the moratorium places
millions of dollars in federal support for public school
students in grave jeopardy. The moratorium also jeopardizes
the continued increase of public school choices for
families required by the No Child Left Behind Act’s
federal mandates.
In the interest of full disclosure it should be noted
that I am the author of the Middle College charter school
proposal which presently sits before the Board of Regents
for a potential September 2005 opening. Therefore, much
more than most, I am both personally and professionally
affected by the moratorium. Yet, I do not see the moratorium
as anymore than a minor speed bump in the long and arduous
journey one must take in the proposal of a new charter
school. I remain positive and confident that the quality
of the charter school proposal is what will determine
its success and not this temporary moratorium.
As Ms. Kaiser of the Jamestown School Committee correctly
asserts, this moratorium is not the "death knell"
of charter schools in Rhode Island. Our eleven schools
are growing and are helping to create a new generation
of public school teachers, students and parents who
expect and receive more from their schools. With regard
to the state of our current charter schools let's please
remember that the moratorium is designed to stop new
schools from opening. If the problem was that the present
schools weren't effective then the remediation would
be for the commissioner to act upon the charter statute
and close down the low performing schools.
Ms. Kaiser is also correct in her assertion that the
funding of charter schools in suburban areas costs more
to the local taxpayer than the funding of charter schools
in urban areas. This inequity has been an issue in suburban
areas for several years now. In order to address this
inequity, Representative Raymond Gallison (D Bristol-Warren)
has often proposed legislation that would give the local
district the ability to approve or withhold the local
portion of a charter school student's tuition. The argument
for this legislation being that there is an absence
of local control by local school boards on how dollars
are allocated. The charter law leaves districts with
no choice other than to pay their fair share (wealthier
districts pay a higher rate than do needier ones) of
the cost of educating each student. The macro issues
are not parental choice or the cost of transporting
and outsourcing students from their home districts to
neighboring public school districts (which many smaller
suburban districts do and as Jamestown presently does
for all its high school students by sending them to
North Kingstown High School) but rather the loss of
autonomy in a school board's fiscal authority. Charter
funding is viewed as an unfunded mandate and it’s
the forced mandate that is being objected to so forcefully
by suburban school leaders and policy makers.
Ironically, when discussing the current charter landscape,
it's the loss of local school board authority created
as a byproduct of the moratorium that offends me the
most and seems to be a missing element in the conversation
thus far. Under the present moratorium no one, not even
a district wanting to develop a charter school would
be able to. The option to convert an existing school
or to start a new one and thus develop new and innovative
school organizational structures, leadership opportunities
for faculty and staff, parental engagement opportunities
and school choice opportunities will be lost for several
years.
For example, the City of Cranston presently has one
open charter spot. Their experiment with the New England
Laborers charter school is proving that small schools
with vibrant learning communities and enthusiastic partnerships
truly work. If Cranston would like to duplicate their
success in the Cranston Laborers Career and Construction
Academy the moratorium prohibits them from doing so.
As an urban ring community, of which there are many,
Cranston is in advantageous position with regard to
the funding formula as more than 50% of the student
tuition is paid by the state. The potential for both
school reform and fiscal efficiency has now been stripped
away by the moratorium.
Charter schools are designed to provide choice and competition.
Obviously, the competition part is working well; otherwise
there would be no moratorium. But let's not engage in
a "baby and the bathwater" scenario here.
It's precisely the "system's" reaction to
the competition which is the real test. No one can start
and run schools as well as districts can. What takes
a Herculean amount of effort for a non-profit start
up team can be done in dramatically less time by a district
initiated team with institutional and local political
support. Currently, every Rhode Island city or town,
except Providence and Pawtucket, can initiate a charter
school program if they so choose.
It's time to bring the lessons of charter schools to
the forefront; that they serve as options and models
designed for the benefit of all Rhode Island public
schools. The moratorium sadly denies any district from
creating their own experiments in choice, school site
governance and the creation of a standard mechanism
for the formation of unique collaboratives between districts.
The moratorium prevents a district from deciding if
it will allocate any of its own funds toward a Cranston-like
experiment. Ironically, the moratorium is a major loss
to school committees and districts in the autonomy of
their own funding decisions. As it stands now, the moratorium
especially limits how local school districts can work
creatively within their own budgets to promote their
own school reform agendas.
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