Class Acts

How charter schools are revamping public education in Arizona--and beyond.

James K. Glassman from the April 1998 issue

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The Hudson Institute study, however, suggests cautious optimism regarding charter schools, noting that the "early signs are promising....[A]t six of eight Massachusetts charter schools where students have been tested, academic gains were greater than is typically found in regular public schools. (The other two cases were inconclusive.) In Lawrence, second-, third-, and fourth-grade students at Community Day Charter School advanced an average of 1.5 years in eight months. In Springfield, where Sabis (a for-profit firm) took over the town's worst elementary school, students in grades second through seven gained 1.5 years in seven months."

Reports of similar gains are trickling in from other parts of the country. The Fenton Avenue Charter School in Los Angeles, with an enrollment that is nearly all poor, boosted test scores more than 20 percent in two years. The Academy of Charter Schools in Colorado reports that students have advanced an average of 13 percentile points in "basic battery" categories for the past two school years.

As important, parents are convinced that charter schools are working for their kids. As part of their study, the Hudson Institute group surveyed the parents of 2,978 students at 30 charter schools in nine states. They found that of parents who said that their children's performance was "below average" at their previous school, 32 percent responded that performance at the charter was now "excellent" or "above average." Fifty-five percent said it was "average." Only 13 percent of the kids remain below average in the view of their parents. Not quite Lake Wobegone (where all the children are famously above average), but it's very impressive when 87 percent of parents see a significant improvement.

But to return to the question that prompted my travels: Are conventional public schools reacting to charter competition in a positive way? Yes. In Arizona's Queen Creek school district, the local elementary school changed its curriculum to a back-to-basics approach in direct response to the opening of a charter school in the district. Flagstaff last year opened a "school within a school" for 100 students, who can focus on either arts or on math and science. As Investor's Business Daily reported, Flagstaff schools spokesman Gary Leatherman minced no words as to why, saying simply, "We did that to stem the flow of students."

The same IBD story notes that after Lansing, Michigan, lost 900 students (about 5 percent of its base, at a cost of more than $5 million) to charters last year, the public school district "announced tough new goals--like higher test scores and reduced dropout rates--with specific targets in place for the next five years." While the announcement of a five-year plan sounds like the typical reaction of a large bureaucracy, in this case it's clear that Lansing's public school administrators are getting the right message.

The massive Hudson Institute report, surveying charter schools around the country, helps flesh out how competition with charters will enrich conventional public education. While Finn and his colleagues stress that at this point they "only have clues" and that they're "not quite certain what a `critical mass' of charter schools will be," the signs of charters' positive effects on traditional public schools are not hard to find. They write, "We've...been to places where the appearance of a charter school (or two or three) in the community leads to beneficial effects from competition, heightened entrepreneurship on the part of the `regular' schools, a scramble to find efficiencies, even `copycat' schools that borrow a popular curriculum, disciplinary strategy, or special service from the charter school."

For example, the researchers found that one charter school in Massachusetts offered full-day kindergarten, prompting the local public school to offer the same. In Detroit, where charter schools just began operating this year, the superintendent of public schools has said, "We're finding the charter idea is helping encourage other schools in our district to examine what they are doing. I don't agree with those who are defensive. We are proud of many things about the Detroit schools. But we can, and must, do better. Charter schools are helping us move in the right direction."

Traditional public schools in San Carlos, California, have been using the charter school there as a research and development laboratory, to see what works. According to the Hudson Institute study, it has "instituted the use of personalized learning plans, thematic instructional units, multi-age classrooms, and technology-based instruction. Other schools in the district are now adopting these approaches."

This evidence, I'll admit, is anecdotal--and sparse--but all signs suggest that charter schools are having an important dual effect: Not only do charters provide their own students with a quality education, they are having a significant impact on non-charter public schools, too. The dynamics unleashed by charter competition may not be the perfect solution to bad schools, but it's hard to see what's better--or more immediately available.

Much of the success of charters depends on the excitement, energy, and drive they generate in all involved. That was evident at the very first charter I visited, the Arizona School for the Arts, in downtown Phoenix. The director, Mark Francis, has for 15 years had a vision of the school he wanted to start--"a school where the arts go hand-in-hand with personal and intellectual development." Says Francis, a Ph.D. in musical arts, "We're a college prep school that allows students to work with performing artists." Education experts will tell you that a school that has such a clear-cut idea guiding it is more likely to succeed than one with the vague mission of simply "teaching" students. When parents, students, teachers, and administrators all know where they are headed, it becomes much easier to arrive at a particular educational destination.

Like most charter entrepreneurs, Francis got the school off the ground himself--recruiting a board, hiring teachers, finding a building (in a church) and, in his special case, making arrangements with a ballet company, a theater company, and the local symphony to give his students instruction. He found the head of the school's academic program, Diane Jarrell (who has a Ph.D. in education) by putting a "little bitty ad in the newspaper. I had something in there that said that certification is not necessary, excellence is."

In its second year, the school has 275 students in grades six through 12--and a waiting list for the middle grades. The state provides an average of $4,500 per student (annual stipends vary by grade), for a total of about $1.2 million. Francis would like more money, but so far he's in the black. Teachers are paid $24,500 to start, with more experienced ones earning $32,000--similar to traditional public school pay in Phoenix. "We prefer to get younger teachers," Francis says, "and bring them up our own way."

Students don't receive grades, but they're subjected to tough oral exams three times a year, and teachers send home a one-page assessment. It's a system that seems to please everyone. And the kids are smart and alert. I visited a social studies class that discussed the economics of art: how, for instance, painters make a living. Some of the students had parents who were artists who also gave lessons or held down other part-time jobs, and they talked about their own experiences. The discussion turned to artists in Renaissance Italy, and the teacher, frankly and accurately, pointed out how the rise of a rich merchant class helped the arts flourish.

Interestingly, Francis says that running a charter has moved him closer to the libertarian camp. "I just want people to have more choices," he says. "And this is a liberal Democrat talking." I ask him what he thought of federal grants to state education agencies for charter schools, which President Clinton is pushing. Not much, he replies: "It costs more to hire someone to do the paperwork." And he fears the strings that are always attached to Washington's money.

Francis reminds me of the owner of any start-up business (I used to be one myself). The school is the fruit of his own imagination, and he's desperate to make it succeed. It's precisely this spirit that's missing from public schools, where bloated power structures make it difficult for students, parents, teachers, and administrators to have much of a personal stake or to believe their involvement can really make a difference. Educators like Francis lead by example--and the schools they're creating in Arizona and elsewhere are likely to lead by example, too--even helping kids sitting in conventional public school classrooms.

Such a powerful ripple effect is one reason why Jaime Molera, the assistant to Arizona Governor Hull, likes to quote his boss as saying that her goal is for all of Arizona's schools to be charter schools--that is, schools of such spectacular variety and independence that parents choose them for their kids.