Charter schools. They've been praised for the choice that they provide to families living in bad public school areas, many of which are urban. An alternative to poorly performing schools, they also have the potential to worsen the problem that they are meant to remedy. By attracting the students who are most eager to perform well in school and the parents who care the most about their children's education, they leave underachieving schools behind with a higher concentration of students who don't care, who don't understand why they should care, and whose parents are too busy to look after, or perhaps are simply uninterested, in their children's education. Despite a brief search through the academic literature, I'll admit that I haven't seen any reference to this process, but it seems to me that it is likely occurring, and hopefully someone can suggest some sources that will either support or contradict my hypothesis. After all, it's the same process that occurred with white flight for neighborhoods (which, through property taxes, played a large role in the trend in public school quality for many areas).
Charter schools can provide value for an educational system through forced competition. But, as with many free market forces, they may trade considerations of equality for the efficiencies that arise from that competition. They should be developed not as a cure-all solution to the ills of the bleeding public school system, but as a complement to strategies aimed at applying pressure to the wounds of that system to stop the bleeding, fix the issues therein, and improve the public schools. Strong, influential charter schools, however, may find it in their interest for the public school system to fail, since that would give them more business, so to speak. So, the public eye must keep watch to prevent the conflicting interests of business to interfere in our shared interest of educating our children, including the children of the poor.
How to improve the public schools themselves deserves much more attention than I can provide in this post, but I would like to make a quick comment thereon. Based on some short conversations with my high school track coach--who has done some great work in the realm of education of the underprivileged and hopes to do more--I believe that the problem with our struggling public schools is not in a lack of funds, as it is often portrayed, as much as it is in a misappropriation of funds. Due in part to the emptying of our cities, many schools have insufficient numbers of students to make the most of their resources, to use those resources efficiently. This is why, I conjecture, struggling public schools sometimes spend the same amounts per student as top tier private schools, yet with frighteningly different, i.e. worse, results. Public attention is often focused through ballot initiatives on the funding of public schools; unfortunately, not enough attention is paid to what happens to the funds. This is where public schools can benefit from the market-based devotion to efficiency, part of the reason why some public school systems use leaders from the private sector to recover after a collapse. But the schools need leaders who not only can ensure funds are used efficiently, but who can also remember that the purpose of what they do, even more important than reducing financial losses, is to educate young people, to reduce human losses.
Coming back to the subject of charter schools, they are an important weapon in improving the education that we provide to our children. Like any weapon, they can be used inappropriately--to sap the public schools of their best students and to leave them without caring parents or responsible public figures invested in their success. But, used appropriately--as a supplement rather than a replacement--charter schools can boost the quality of all schools, including those in the city. And when a city's public and charter schools serve as an asset rather than as a liability, then cities can expect more families to choose to live in their borders rather than only those with few or no other options. Quality education, furthermore, is important to cities not only in creating a more qualified workforce for advanced, better-paying, more respectable jobs, but also in giving young people a serious and promising alternative to crime, which brings me to my next post.
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