Tom Dooher: Here's a better way

Let me set the record straight: Education Minnesota is not "against" charter schools. We support anything that is proven to help kids learn. If the teachers, principals and staff at any school come up with an innovation that increases student achievement, we want to know about it, and we want to figure out how other Minnesota schools can adapt it to help their own students.

Innovation, accountability for results and dissemination of the best teaching ideas statewide -- that was the intent when the Legislature created charter schools in 1991. But it's not what most charter schools are doing today. Before Minnesota embarks on further charter expansion, we think it's time for a closer look at how well the charter school movement is living up to its founding principles.

Charter schools today operate as an expensive parallel public school system in Minnesota, attracting pupils and resources that might otherwise have gone to traditional public schools -- but without returning statewide benefits in the form of higher student achievement or successful new ways of teaching and learning.

In December, Education Minnesota proposed revising the state's application for federal Race to the Top funds to focus on initiatives that will produce real results for Minnesota's students.

The state's current plan provides for charter schools or other outside organizations to take over the operation of so-called "turnaround schools" -- the lowest-performing schools, with many struggling students. A new bureaucracy would be created to oversee this process.

We think that's the wrong way to spend scarce education dollars. Our plan would create educator-led Centers of Teaching Excellence in our state's lowest-performing schools, focused on research-based practices that have been shown to increase student achievement.

These include very small class sizes, individualized instruction, intensive professional development for teachers and staff, and a collaborative approach to implementing the best ways to teach struggling students. What teachers learned at these schools would be shared statewide. We would also surround students and families with support -- from home visits by teachers to a variety of services families could access right in the school building.

Several recent studies have looked at achievement in Minnesota charter schools and found that charter school students do worse -- not better -- than demographically similar students in traditional public schools. Stanford University researchers found that Minnesota charter students' gains in reading and math were "significantly worse" than those of peers in traditional schools. Disparities were also reported by researchers at the Great Lakes Center, the Office of the Legislative Auditor, and the University of Minnesota's Institute on Race and Poverty.

Such studies have limitations, of course, and their findings certainly don't apply to every charter school and every student. But it is safe to say that as a blanket "reform" -- one that's being pushed hard by charter advocates, think tanks and the federal government -- charter schools have not fulfilled their promise.

How about financial accountability? Several Minnesota charter schools have been forced to close as the result of mismanagement and financial improprieties. Here the model has worked, but at the expense of students, families and school employees who were left high and dry when their school closed.

Clearly, there is a need for better oversight of charter schools and charter school authorizers (formerly called "sponsors"). The 2009 Legislature took a good first step in this direction, but more needs to be done. Recent disclosures about the misuse of state lease aid for charter school buildings also should be addressed in the 2010 session.

What about innovation? The descriptions of metro-area charter programs in the Center for School Change's 2009 brochure sound a lot like regular public school offerings: Comprehensive curricula, interdisciplinary learning, independent study, International Baccalaureate, and various magnet-type programs in languages, arts, classics and other areas.

Other questions that should be asked about charters have to do with unintended consequences. The Institute on Race and Poverty report focused on segregation, finding that "nonwhite segregated charter schools" are predominant in Minnesota and that charter schools serving ethnic niches contribute to the imbalance. Children of color who attend charter schools are likely to be in classroom settings even more segregated than in traditional public schools.

The Legislature should undertake a thorough reexamination of charter schools -- not just of governance and finances, but of how well these schools are working for students, of their impact on Minnesota's overall public school system, and of whether other alternatives would give state taxpayers more bang for the buck.