Traverse City Record-Eagle

Other Views

December 27, 2011

Other View: Charter schools fine, but no reckless expansion

The Daily Telegram (Adrian)

It's hard to argue with charter schools in principle. They provide educational alternatives and give kids in areas with failing schools a chance to get a better education.

But the Republican-led Legislature has decided to go down the road of unbridled expansion, even rejecting a number of sensible changes that would have added more accountability to the system.

The bill would remove the cap on charters issued by public state universities, which now is at 150, by changing it to 300 through the end of 2012 and 500 through the end of 2014, then eliminating it completely.

For this discussion to make sense, we need to explain how the charter school cap works. The Center for Charter Schools at Central Michigan University calls it a "smart cap," which allows "high performing" charters to be eligible for reauthorization outside the 150-school cap placed on state public universities.

The current system strives to add new charter schools only as existing charters demonstrate that they're doing what they're supposed to do. The cap of 150 is not a magic number -- there's certainly room to argue for increasing it -- but it makes sense to have a system such as the current one tying schools' growth to promises met. ...

One (proposed amendment) would have required charter schools to post their management contracts, service contracts, facility leases and deeds online -- a reasonable transparency measure of the sort that this Legislature has eagerly imposed on traditional public schools. Another would have prohibited members of a charter school's board from having a financial interest in a company hired to run the school. Where limits were added, meanwhile, they were often without teeth. For instance, the law requires authorizing bodies to "consider" (various) factors ... but the authorizing bodies don't actually have to do anything with the information they consider. ...

We believe there may be a case for charters even in districts where traditional schools are performing well, but they should not be expanded recklessly. In the best-case scenario, charters will improve educational opportunities, both by giving students more options and by placing pressure on schools that are truly failing students. In the worst-case scenario, they will simply take money away from traditional public schools and funnel it into private management firms without offering any improvement.

As future changes are considered, a careful approach is necessary to make sure the former happens rather than the latter.

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