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Post Magazine
This week: Charter Schools
With Marc Fisher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 9, 2001; 1 p.m. EDT
The movement toward charter schools in the District of Columbia and other American cities has meant a move away from a central curriculum. So, a question is: Are such schools providing customized education, a breakdown in curricular coherence -- or both?
Marc Fisher, whose cover story "Uncommon Knowledge" appeared in Sunday's Washington Post Magazine, will be online today to field questions and comments about the article and the implications of charter schools.
Fisher's column appears three times a week in The Washington
Post Metro section. He has covered education issues for more than 20 years.
Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
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Marc Fisher: Welcome aboard, folks. The charter school debate is a pitched and polarized one, and I'm sure we'll hear vehement positions on all sides today. But I'd also like to hear from charter and other parents and students about their experiences in the schools--now that the charters are here and still adding lots of schools each year, I think we need to know more about what happens inside them. So let's hear what's on your minds....
Adams Morgan, D.C.:
Enjoyed the article, especially as the parent of a DCPS student.
Is there one source of information on DC charter schools, like a web site or a brochure? How would someone begin researching DC charter school options?
Thanks. washingtonpost.com:
District of Columbia Charter Schools
Marc Fisher: Thanks. Another good source of info is at www.focus-dccharter.org, which is run by Friends of Choice in Urban Schools and has a complete list of the DC charter schools, with links to each school's site.
Washington, D.C.:
Marc,
I know as a journalist, you tried to enter this story without any preconceived ideas. But looking back, what did you find in your reporting that most surprised you? I guess I was surprised that charter school kids in many cases seem as apathetic as those in traditional public schools. I sort of pictured CS kids to be extra dedicated and involved in their studies, as they (and their families) had chosen these programs.
Marc Fisher: I had heard so much about charter schools cherrypicking their students--discouraging behavior problems from applying, informally urging parents to take their kids elsewhere if the kids seemed problematic. But what I saw at most of the schools I visited--and an important caveat is that I focused on high schools, whereas some of the biggest problems are in elementary schools--was quite the opposite of what I had expected: principals and administrators who very much wanted to take on the most difficult students.
At the Angelou School, for example, while they cannot enforce this as policy, their stated desire is to serve students who have been through the juvenile justice system. So I saw very little evidence of trying to keep out problem kids.
Arlington, Va.:
Marc, ultimately, who benefits the most from charter schools?
Marc Fisher: Well, it depends on the charter school. The range of quality is extreme. The best of them can be a powerful boost to students who might have been lost or worse in the public schools; in those cases, everyone benefits--students, parents, community. The worst charter schools benefit no one but the companies or agencies that run them, and sadly, there have been persistent reports of some schools doing what too many DC public schools have done for years--enriching corrupt administrators while everyone else loses.
The ultimate question about charters is how to assure a reasonable quality control without dampening the freedom that charters must have to be different and to be better.
Falls Church, Va.:
Marc, do families have to pay more for their children to go to charter schools?
Marc Fisher: No, parents pay nothing. To a family, a charter school is no different from a public school. In fact, it is a public school, but it is not run by the public school administration. Rather, it is run by the company, parent group, non-profit agency or other entity that created the charter school.
Washington, D.C.:
What about the liberals in Congress who opposed school charter but send their kids to private schools anyway as a recent Heritage Foundation report mentioned?
Marc Fisher: I don't think that's limited by any means to liberals. You won't find many conservatives in Congress who send their kids to public school, either.
But you're surely correct that there is a hypocrisy issue for anti-charter school politicians (and others) who choose private school for their own kids.
Washington, D.C.:
Are there elementary charter schools or just highschools?
Marc Fisher: Most of the charters--in fact, a considerable majority-- are elementary schools. I chose to focus on high schools both because I wanted to hone in on the teaching of history, and because I thought I would get a better sense of students' experiences by choosing a level at which students could thoughtfully discuss their own education.
Herndon, Va.:
Can you explain really briefly what charter schools are? Do they take funding away from public schools in the same regard as many voucher programs? If not, how to they stay operational?
Marc Fisher: Sure--with all the debate and rhetoric over school choice, it's hard to keep all the categories straight. Charter schools are public schools that are started up and run by people outside the public school system. Sometimes they are for-profit corporations, sometimes they are parents or teachers, sometimes they are non-profit groups. In Washington, there are charters run by previously existing private schools and charters run by teachers who left the public system.
What all charters have in common is their funding mechanism--they get the same per-student amount that the public schools get, and they get the money from the city, through the public schools. So you could argue that charters steal money from the public schools, or you could argue that they take nothing away from the public schools, because the system loses only as much money as it loses students.
Silver Spring, Md.:
Good article. You were less hard on charter schools than I thought you'd be, given your robust views in your Metro column.
You said in the column a few weeks ago that someone told you if Prince George's had charter schools, parents would be lining up for 20 miles to get in. Do you still believe that, given the very real flaws in charters you identified in your piece? Or do you think the line would be 25 miles long now, given the desperation of parents for something different, as you also showed charters to be?
Marc Fisher: I think that the second the gates are opened for charters in Prince George's, there will be a storm of interest, some of it born of the failure of county schools, some of it stemming from those TV ads you've probably seen about school choice.
Look at the huge flow of people from Prince George's to southern Maryland--a lot of that is powered by people seeking better schools. Charters would be embraced quickly there, as well as in parts of Montgomery and Fairfax.
Adams Morgan, D.C.:
I noticed that you did not include Paul Junior High in your article, the school that gained notoriety for leaving DCPS under its own charter. Did you leave it alone because of its heavily politicized nature? How does Paul, which is simply trying to be the same neighborhood school that it was before sans the inept DCPS leadership, compare to other charters, which essentially are start up schools?
Marc Fisher: I only left out Paul because it is a junior high school and I tried to focus mainly on high schools. But it is one of the most interesting cases in town--a public school that fought a battle royal to transform itself into a charter school.
Washington, D.C.:
What I can't understand is how D.C. Public Schools spend more per child than any public school system in the nation, yet these kids consistently score in the bottom five percentile in standardized verbal and math tests. Do they honestly think that hiring more $90k per year Second Deputy Assistant Secretarys to the Vice Principal will change this?
Whites fled D.C. in the '60s and '70s, African Americans in the '80s and '90s, the lousy state of the public school system being a major reason. They've had decades to improve. Charter, private, and home schooling may not be the only answer, but the D.C. Public School system has consistently put the welfare of its bureacracy ahead of the children they allegedly serve.
Marc Fisher: I don't think you're right in saying that DC schools spend more per child than any other system, but they certainly do spend a great deal, and your fundamental question is a good one. Superintendent Vance and the new school board seem to be far more realistic than their predecessors in acknowledging the deficits and trying to do something about it.
But the odds against making big improvements in any struggling urban school system are long. The students are burdened with myriad social problems, which schools cannot be expected to resolve. The teacher shortage hits urban schools hardest. The bureaucracy is deeply set in its ways and requires enormous expenditure of political capital to dynamite out of the way. Vance is saying he intends to spend his capital on getting rid of incompetents and crooks; I wish him well, but I do not see much evidence that the mayor and the rest of the city power structure is prepared to support him.
Centreville, Va.:
With charter schools being funded by companies, is there a lot of concern being generated about the possiblity of a biased education? Special interest groups could have a whole new target audience.
Marc Fisher: The public backlash against for-profit schools is already palpable. Edison Schools have repeatedly run into popular uprisings; they were just tossed out of San Francisco and New York City voters just resoundingly chose to keep Edison out of town. Here, they have been more openly received, perhaps in part because they have hired some very popular and strong local principals.
But the potential for bias is quite strong, and not only in the for-profit schools. The Marriott school is a non-profit school where the role of the hotel and other companies that fund this "hospitality" high school seems to me to be distorting the curriculum for the benefit of the companies that are paying the freight.
Washington, D.C.:
Marc,
I really enjoyed your story. I loved the teacher at SEED especially. He sounded great.
Did you speak with administrators about the problems they had starting up their programs? I understand that there are difficulties with getting the financing for facilities loans, etc.
Marc Fisher: Thanks very much. Brandon Lloyd is a teacher who changes lives. Even a mediocre school can become a very special place with just a couple such teachers.
Finding a building for your charter school is one of the biggest hurdles any charter faces, and under former Supt. Ackerman, it was especially difficult. It has gotten easier under Supt. Vance, who is much more open to the concept of charters.
Washington, D.C.:
I teach a course at American University in Education Policy and Special Education. My students and I are very interested in the reform movement in D.C. and have visited several Charter Schools and met with someone from the Charter Co-op. We would love to have you visit us at the Tenley Campus and hear you address our concerns and share with us your insights. Sometime between now and May 4th would work.
Helen Levine
email hcflevine-hotmail.com
Marc Fisher: I'd be happy to talk to you about a visit. Please email me at marcfisher@washpost.com
Annandale, Va.:
I assume the one of the biggest draws for charter schools is the chance to do education differently from the failing public schools. In my humble opinion charter schools just enhance an ever growing problem in education. Doing it differently, doesn't mean doing it better. What standards are being used to evaluate the quality of education in charter schools?
Marc Fisher: You're right that doing it differently doesn't mean doing it better. But given the mind-numbing sameness of too many urban schools, doing it differently is a good start. The key is how to make sure charters do it differently and smartly, because difference for the sake of difference is no help. And I have not seen any charter system that has developed a good way of overseeing the content of what happens in the classroom. Charter boards tend to be made up of people who believe that charters should have enormous independence; they are loathe to supervise too closely for fear of deadening the school, as public systems do.
But there are obvious abuses that occur when there's no strong supervision. It is the central paradox of charters and it needs some creative solutions.
Adams Morgan, D.C.:
One of the chief criticisms I've heard about charter schools is the lack of accountable oversight. Failing schools (either in terms of finances or instructional success) are often not identified until the problems are past the point of solution. How stringent is the D.C. Charter School Board following the approval process? According to your report, they certainly don't probe the curriculums with much vigor.
Marc Fisher: There are two different charter school boards in Washington. One is run by the public system and the other is totally separate. There have been troubled schools under both boards, but in my view, the more persistent troubles have come from schools chartered by the D.C. Board of Education, while the Public Charter School Board seems to be more rigorous and attentive in screening charter applications.
Alexandria, Va.:
Marc, at several places, you suggested that charter schools have an advantage because they have more recources; but in other places you mention classes taught in renovated closets and schools run out of one floor of an office building. Which is it: do they have more resources or fewer? Don't most charter schools have to spend more on capital improvements than public schools, and doesn't their funding usually not cover those expenses?
Marc Fisher: You've hit on the truth about charters: There is no single description of them. There is no single reality. They range from exciting and idealistic to deadening and cynical. Some look sharp; others are dumps. Some have high-energy teachers with impressive backgrounds; others have weak recruits just passing the time in class.
They all get the same amount of money per student. Some do extra fundraising and invest it all in the classrooms and teachers; others scrape by on what the city gives them. And some have far better facilities than others.
DC:
Why is the NEA opposed charter schools? Sureley a little competition must wake up the public school systems. Money is not the answer. Just the change of programs must help.
Marc Fisher: The easy answer is that the teachers unions see charters are competition that will steal away jobs from their members. The more nuanced answer is that some unions are actually becoming more open to charters, and that they very correctly fear that charters will lack standards and could end up depriving kids of an education.
Washington, D.C.:
It is my understanding that most charter schools are not using standardized tests such as Standford 9's to assess their students academic achievement. How can we evaluate and compare the effectiveness of charter schools to that of D.C. public schools without standardized test scores?
What if any objective criteria is being used to evaluate and compare these schools?
Marc Fisher: Sadly, the charter schools do indeed use the same idiotic tests that the public school use, and those test results are published for all to see. So far, the charters have as a group shown no greater success than the regular public schools, though it is very early in the process. I would prefer that charters be freed from the testing obsession that pervades the public schools, but that is unfortunately not in the offing.
There are, however, some charters that choose to break with the public system's test mania and, while they must administer the tests, they at least don't spend all their time prepping for them.
Washington, D.C.:
I enjoyed the article, and am a proud parent of a freshman at Chavez. I learned of Chavez through FOCUS, an excellent organization that has gotten the unbiased word out about the charter schools in D.C. I am pleased with the education that my child has received thus far: she is more attentive, she's taking more responsiblity for her own education and learning, and she generally seems to enjoy school a lot more than she previously did at the traditional DCPS schools. What I'd like to see done is someone to track kids' progression through the CS systems and how well they do after graduation. Are you aware of any organizations that have been/may be doing studies of this type now?
Marc Fisher: There are a number of studies underway on the charters, and I reported in the magazine story on the George Washington University study, which is continuing.
I'm glad to hear that about Chavez; I sat in on some very exciting classes there, and have been very impressed by some of the students there.
Washington, D.C.:
I thought your article gave too short and too unfavorable treatment of D.C. Public (non-charter) schools. I thought you didn't give Paul Vance sufficient space to respond to what was going on with respect to charter schools. My question: When will you write a similar article on exciting classes in the D.C. Public Schools?
Marc Fisher: I'm surprised to hear that you thought Vance didn't get enough space in the article; in fact, I gave him both the first and the last word and quoted him at length because I think the stated ideal of the charter schools--that their innovation will force public schools to compete and improve--should be tested and who better to comment on that than the superintendent of the city's schools?
I write from time to time on the city public schools in my column, and will continue to do so.
Fairfax, Va.:
Given the trend of the Supreme Court decisions recently to reverse school desegregation, do you think that charters may pose a viable option in getting around the 'built-in' segregation of our system due to our highly segregated neighborhoods?
Marc Fisher: Good question--in the District, at least, there is no evidence of the charters playing any distinctive role in integrating this city's extremely segregated schools. The charters do indeed attract a disproportionately Hispanic population, but that is the result primarily of Chavez and a couple of other charters that have a strong mix of black and Hispanic kids. But there are no charter schools west of Rock Creek Park--the founders of charters are mostly people who are focused on serving low-income, low-performing students--and there is virtually no white enrollment in the charters.
Oceanside, Calif.:
Are you planning any follow-up pieces on elementary charter schools?
Marc Fisher: I am not at the moment, but I know there are other reporters at the Post who are very much interested in looking closely at the charters at all levels, and you can be sure we will be doing some ambitious reporting in the months to come.
D.C. Native:
Hi Marc:
My neighbor did the charter school thing and ended up taking her child out. Now that this new system has been publicized with Black faces on TV (check the commercials out)... its been accepted by those kids (majority white)as a Welfore program. So here comes the sterotype again. The kids teased my neighbors kid everyday. The kid would come home with notes from his fellow students saying things like "Get off of Welfare Progams" No Welfare Kids allowed.
So, how does one explain to his/her child how to deal with such circumstances. This child's mind has been affected, compared to lets say a white child that has some what of a better life and has never felt teasing, or deliberate prejudice.
Marc Fisher: I'm surprised to hear that kids are ribbing charter students on that basis. There may be some jealousy at play here, since the charter students often have books, uniforms, supplies, computers and other stuff that the public schools may lack.
Silver Spring, MD:
Traditional public schools often express resentment toward charter public schools -- siphoning money, siphoning students and teachers, etc.
But how have traditional public schools responded to the "threat" of charter schools?" Have traditional public schools improved in any way at all? Is there any reason to believe that charter schools have spurred effective innovation in traditional public schools?
Marc Fisher: I have seen no evidence of any specific changes made in regular public schools as a response to the challenge of the charters. However, there have been several attempts by the public schools to offer parents more choices--magnet programs, schools within schools, specialized curricula--all obviously as an answer to the "choice" offered by the charters. But in the average classroom of the average public school, I see no innovations that could be traced to the impact of charters. And most charter advocates I know freely admit that that part of their mission has not yet found success.
Washington, D.C.:
I was discouraged to note that even the best of the charter high schools don't seem to be making much of an impact. By the time the students reach 10th grade, are the accumulated deficits just too extensive to be overcome?
Marc Fisher: I don't think I agree with your premise. The best of the charters are having a powerful impact on their students; many parents made that quite clear to me, as did many students.
But if you are basing your conclusion solely on test scores, then you are correct. There are as yet no numbers to support the notion that charters are, as a group, better. But there are many factors beyond test scores that determine success in the eyes of parents and children--and chief among them are safety, intimacy, the sense that teachers know and understand your child, the ability of a school to inspire a child and make him feel a part of a good community.
Falls Church, Va.:
Do any other communities in this area have charter schools?
Marc Fisher: There has been an ongoing effort by a group in Montgomery County that wants to open a charter school there--no success as yet. There are some rumblings along those lines in Prince George's County. And in Virginia, there are some localities that have taken steps toward permitting charters, but none have opened. Yet.
Herndon, Va.:
If school systems in general do away with standardized tests, then how would the schools demonstrate their students' mastery of the subjects. I agree that the current batch of tests are subject and cumbersome. Unfortunately, with the intellectual health of the next generation at stake, I don't think that we can "go with our guts" on the effectiveness of any school. Even the most well-meaning teacher can and has taught incorrect or inaccurate subject matter.
Marc Fisher: Don't get me wrong--I like standardized tests. I think the best of them do precisely what they promise to do. But they don't do more than that, and they are being abused in a destructive way by everyone from the president down to most local school boards. There's a good reason that the manufacturers of the tests are shouting out against the overdependence on testing; these tests were simply not made to be the primary measure of a student's worth. Not at the elementary school level and not at the college level.
I agree it would be wrong to judge students purely on gut and feelings. But it is equally wrong to think that you can quantify the results of an education. Sorry, it's just not that simple.
Washington, D.C.:
Why is there not equal attention paid to private schools? Are they not as equally prone to poor leadership? Or is it assumed that paying parents won't let that happen?
I'm new to this debate & just curious.
Marc Fisher: I don't quite get the question. Equal attention paid by whom? By the newspaper? We do indeed write about private schools, but the bulk of our education resources are properly devoted to public schools, because they are funded by all taxpayers, who deserve to know how their money is being used. And yes, it is fair to assume that parents who are paying tuition are keeping closer tabs on their schools than do parents at public institutions. Not all parents, of course, but in general.
Marc Fisher: That's all we have time for today. Many thanks for reading the article and joining me here. If you'd like to continue the conversation, please join me Thursday at noon for my regular Live Online show, Potomac Confidential.
Til then, enjoy the sunshine.
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