While the lure of charter schools that promise a new approach to education can be enticing for communities where school districts are struggling, an advocacy group warned against falling under their spell.
That was the consensus from a virtual forum last month about public and charter schools hosted by the Edgewater-based Advocates for Public Education Policy, also known as A4PEP. The group advocates for less reliance on standardized testing as well as increased funding for public education.
A4PEP invited Derek Black, a professor with the University of South Carolina School of Law and author of “School House Burning: Public Education as Foundation of Democracy,” to share his expertise and answer questions from forum attendees, including Commerce City Mayor Steve Douglas.
Black is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts in education law and policy. His research has been published in the top legal journals and has been cited in the U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
Black laid out his case of noting where he felt charter schools do a disservice to the students they serve. He leaned into the longtime argument regarding oversight of such schools.
“Public schools are accountable to a local school board, to voters, to any number of transparency laws, and charter schools are not,” he said. “They do not have public accountability. The public doesn’t have a right to ask a charter school to do something or the right to access certain information. Now, if the charter school is not doing anything problematic, that’s fine. But transparency and public accountability doesn’t exist in the charter system.”
In Colorado, he said, studies show that charter schools may not lead to innovative teaching methods. Results can be inconsistent, or students may be divided by income, race or ethnicity.
In Denver, for example, top-rated charter schools will usually have a majority of White students: 1,063 White compared with 916 Hispanic and 706 Black. In lower-performing schools, the ethnic and racial breakdown is 1,192 Hispanic, 416 Black and 243 White.
Statewide, according to A4PEP, charter schools enroll over 67,000 White, 45,000 Hispanic, 8,000 Black, and 6,500 Asian students, often in racially and economically homogenous settings.
Lucy Molina, a Commerce City resident, community organizer and Adams 14 school board director, brought up that there is a lack of knowledge in communities of color about the difference between types of charter, public or private schools.
She gave a personal example of her sister, who grew up in Commerce City and was educated in Adams 14 and did not know the difference between a public school and a charter school.
“I grew up here. I’ve been around educated people who used us to privatize our district at one point, and we didn’t know what we were doing,” Molina said. Her sister once showed up proudly wearing a charter school’s T-shirt. “She didn’t understand. She said, ‘What’s the difference, Lucy?’ A school is a school.’ ”
Molina said the charter school her sister’s three children attended was run “like a business.” Before she enrolled them, staff would call her sister frequently to recruit her children. After she did so, they fell off the radar.
Her nephew, who is autistic, was suspended because he “acted out” and brought a toy gun to school, Molina said. In a lot of ways, she didn’t feel he was getting the attention he needed.
“He became a statistic,” Molina said. “In his situation, his condition made it too hard for the school to attend to him.
“There are a lot of Hispanic people with kids that are disabled, and [charter schools] basically just take their money, and as soon as they get their money, they let the kids go.”
The professor added that while it’s true that in recent years, charter schools have been trying to serve communities of color more, he believes the industry is “growing in culturally problematic ways” and may be catering to right-wing extreme interests as well,” Black said.
“We have a movement of classical charter schools with classical ideas about white folks and women that are spreading across this country, and they’re being financed because there’s a market there,” he said. “Even if these charter schools are doing good things for some communities, the whole idea that charter schools cater to the lowest common denominator, and produce an education that fits people’s political attitudes or racial attitudes is highly problematic in a pluralistic society.”
Douglas commented that he attended predominantly white schools in Colorado.
“There were probably only about five Black families at my high school. It was that way from grade school all the way up,” he said.
The mayor noted that he observes charter schools are receiving funding through shifting their education toward students of color.
“That happens in 27J. Charter schools act like they’re catering to communities of color but then they cherry-pick, and it ends up being the White kids that go to those schools,” Douglas said. “So kids of color do not have the same opportunity.
“Then in Adams 14, the challenge is charter schools also look toward minorities for funding; mainly the Hispanic population. Adams 14 has had their issues throughout the years but if you look at their school board they’ve done a terrific job. Their school district offers a much better education than it did just a few years ago.”
But he noted that an Adams 14 charter school hung a banner claiming that it was not part of the Adams 14 School District, implying that the district is bad. Douglas called that action “really wrong.”
Segregation in schools didn’t end with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Black said. While it isn’t the case in all charter schools, some communities have more diverse public schools while their charter schools become more White.
“It’s modern-day segregation,” he said.
Also, to break it down even further into a socioeconomic issue, Black students in public schools tend to be lower income than Black students in charter schools. He described this as “segregation within segregation in the charter school system.”
Black also noted that charter schools appeal to higher income families because they are cheaper to educate. Students from wealthier backgrounds have fewer demands on their school than children in poverty because the children’s needs are met at home.
There will also be fewer expenses such as free and reduced lunch, assistive technology or disability services. To take it a step further, he said, charter schools might often only take students with minor special needs because it costs them less.
“A student with dyslexia or vision problems is manageable, but a student with more severe disabilities that may affect their behavior, like autism or ADHD, they don’t want to take those kids,” Black said.
Another issue brought up with public schools is the way that teachers are compensated and the benefits they receive. In the past, folks who work in public schools were able to build “really solid lives for themselves,” with a good income and decent benefits and that reality just isn’t attainable anymore, Black pointed out.
While teachers have been tasked with handling more issues over the years, from school shootings to cyber bullying to rising mental health problems among children, they haven’t been rewarded for it: cuts due to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, more commonly known as TABOR, and low salaries that often don’t cover the cost of student loans make it a difficult occupation. Educators’ salaries have not kept up with the rising cost of living and the price of most everything with inflation.
“The task of being an educator just keeps getting bigger and bigger,” Black said.
He noted that fixing public schools would actually be pretty easy, if we just made some “common sense investments” through funding and increased support from the community.
This article has been updated.