More than 14,000 students fill charter school waiting lists in Chicago. The biggest reason for that: Parents believe their kids will gain a better education at those schools.
The best charters help kids to excel. They narrow the pernicious achievement gap between white and minority students. They post impressive graduation rates and help more students attend college. They chuck out the rules of traditional schools, and they draw gifted teachers and give them the incentive … to … go … teach. No wonder there’s a waiting list.
But not every charter leaves the nearest neighborhood school in the dust. The Illinois State Board of Education this week released its first campus-by-campus charter report card. It’s sobering. It shows what a lot of school experts have been saying for some time: Many charter schools are fabulous places for kids to learn, but some are not delivering.
The students at some charter schools in Chicago — including some run by the more prominent national and local charter school networks — haven’t reached the citywide average for achievement on standardized tests. The list includes some schools run by the United Neighborhood Organization, Chicago International Charter Schools, and the University of Chicago, considered to be among the best charter operators in the nation. (Note that the citywide average includes Chicago’s elite selective-enrollment schools.)
We’re huge fans of charter schools. We want to see more of the best charter school operators come to Chicago.
But the schools and the operators have to prove their worth. They don’t get a pass because they have the golden name “charter.” If some don’t raise the educational achievement of Chicago’s children, they should be reconstituted or closed. Make room for new schools, new operators, new ideas.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said Wednesday that CPS will force major changes at two underperforming charter schools, changes that ultimately could lead to closing them. A third, Chicago International Charter Schools’ Basil elementary campus, will go into turnaround. That’s a last-ditch option, short of closing, in which CPS replaces school leadership and staff and revamps curriculum.
That suggests CPS leaders understand that charters must be held to the highest performance standards.
Now, Andrew Broy, head of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, warns about the limitations of the state charter data.
He argues that charters should be judged not on a single standardized test score, but on the trajectory of student growth over time. Broy says that 17 of 26 Chicago charter high schools showed better growth in student achievement this year than the average traditional high school.
That’s great news for students and parents in those 17 schools.
And it says that students and parents in the other nine schools ought to be asking a lot of questions.
Chicago has been a leader in urban school reform. That’s largely because of its charter school networks and the organizations that recruit and train strong teachers and principals and rigorously assess what’s working and what’s not in this city’s schools. Thanks to all of them.
Meanwhile, CPS announced that four dismally performing Chicago elementary and high schools will be closed or begin to be phased out, and 10 schools will be reconstituted.
That news always sparks controversy, but that kind of dramatic change is necessary. CPS says 123,000 students attend underperforming schools, nearly one in three students.
Brizard hopes to blunt some of the emotion, controversy and disruption by improving surrounding schools, so there are better alternatives for students if their schools are closed.
We like his sense of urgency. Chicago has to keep all of its schools, traditional, charter, other alternative schools, under the microscope. A student gets one chance, only a few years, to learn. Let’s make those years count at every school.
