How Charters Succeed and Serve a Needed Function in Rhode Island Public Education

Charters are Rhode Island’s only public school choice option. In the era of No Child Left Behind, school choice is a reality that states have to grapple with. Some states have opted for vouchers. In Rhode Island, charters are our only form of public school choice for students in struggling districts.

Charters in Rhode Island serve an at-risk population that has high free lunch participation, equivalent special education numbers and who mostly live in urban areas. Charters serve the neediest students.

Charter schools do not under-perform their district peers on standardized tests. In an analysis of Providence charters and the Providence District Report Cards, a trend was clear, charters performed higher than district averages. In the case of Times2 and Textron/Chamber School, their district affiliation caused them to bolster the score they were being compared against. Classical High School was also figured into the district high school averages and the charters were still competitive.

The current number of students on the waiting lists of the ten open schools is almost double the projected number of new seats in those schools for next year.

The 698 new students projected in the current budget represents thirty five new classrooms (at 20 students per class) that will not have to be funded and opened in Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Cranston, Central Falls and South Kingstown.

Charter school students in the urban areas cost pennies to the local taxpayer. In Providence, where the most charter school students come from (1,038 of 1,718), each student costs the district approx. $1, 200 and the student is kept on district rosters for reimbursement purposes. Charter schools, because of the savings they represent, are a form fiscal relief to distressed urban districts.

One third of Rhode Island’s Charter schools are union schools. In those schools, there are enough teachers to make 50% of all Rhode Island charter teaching positions unionized. Next year’s charter growth will create at least six new union teaching positions.

Charter schools outperform their district peers in the areas of school safety, lack of teacher burnout and high overall teacher efficacy, personalized attention to students, high levels of parental engagement and high attendance rates for students.

By law, charter schools can have their charters’ revoked by the Department of Education. Although this has not happened yet, the state’s ability to do this goes unquestioned among the charter school community and serves as great motivational factor. Additionally, parents can pull their children out of charter schools and are well-treated as customers in order to prevent this. Both these new realities, which strengthen school performance, are only found in charters and not in the traditional public system.