Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Should Illinois increase the number of charter schools?

In Gov. Bruce Rauner’s first State of the State address Feb. 4, he advocated lifting Illinois’ cap on charter schools. Under current law, the number of charters in Chicago is capped at 70, plus an additional five alternative public charter schools, and at 45 throughout the remainder of the state.

Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education and director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois, has done extensive research on student achievement in public and private schools. Lubienski spoke with News Bureau education editor Sharita Forrest about his research on education reform.

Illinois’ per-pupil funding for charter schools – currently 75 to 125 percent of what public schools receive – is potentially more generous than states like Indiana and Michigan, which fund publics and charters the same. While Rauner supports expanding the number of charter schools, he also faces a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Is Illinois likely to expand the number of charters but restructure the funding?

The trend across states, partly due to bipartisan federal policies, has been to expand charters. In Illinois, the fact that many charter supporters and managers are politically connected probably suggests further expansion is likely here, as well, but it’s increasingly difficult to argue that these schools are a cost-saving measure.

Originally, charters were held up as an efficiency model that could do more with less, since they were supposed to shed bureaucratic regulations and costs. But recently it is appearing like that argument was a foot-in-the-door strategy.

Now charter supporters are arguing for parity or equity of funding. While that would seem to make sense, you also have to take into account the fact that charters are serving proportionately fewer higher-cost students. At the same time, the administrative apparatus and for-profit elements in the charter sector are growing quickly.

Some lawmakers are proposing that Title I funds be made portable, so that low-income students could attend the schools of their choice and the funding would follow them. If these funds became portable, what might the impact be on student achievement and school budgets?

Yes, Republican senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Tim Scott of South Carolina have been pushing this proposal. Based on the track record of these types of programs, this is not likely to help improve schooling opportunities or outcomes in general.

Any gains from these types of schemes have proved to be pretty marginal, at best. But worse, they can also lead to greater socioeconomic segregation, which has detrimental impacts, particularly for poor children.

A new assessment of this proposal from the think tank Center for American Progress suggests that this would redistribute potentially tens of millions of dollars away from the largest districts with the most students in poverty to more affluent schools.

I would expect to see some private schools emerge to serve these students, but many of those schools would be pretty bad.

At least one recent report on student achievement indicates that charters may not outperform – and sometimes perform worse than — neighborhood public schools. What does your latest research show about student achievement and teacher effectiveness in charter schools?

There’s a general consensus now that charter schools on average perform no better than public schools, particularly when we consider student demographics. This is what I’ve found in my research with U. of I. education professor Sarah Lubienski, but also what most other credible studies are finding as well.

Although there are some great charter schools, in general, the results are similar to – and too often beneath – those of demographically comparable public schools.

The only group not sharing in this consensus is charter school proponents, who aren’t really familiar with, or interested in, the research. And, as we’ve found, teacher quality is part of the reason for this. Charter-school teachers tend to have less training and experience and often don’t stay in those jobs very long.

One premise behind school choice is that it forces public schools to improve by fostering competition for students, which promotes diversity and equality of opportunity. However, critics contend that choice increases segregation and enables “creaming” – charter schools’ skimming off the best students. What impact on enrollment patterns and performance measures have you found in the schools you have studied?

There’s a growing consensus that these different forms of choice are associated with greater levels of segregation by race, social class and academic ability. Some of this is due to parents choosing to leave more integrated schools for more segregated ones.

But I’m also finding that schools are responding to this competition in ways that exacerbate these patterns – for example, by marketing to a certain type of family or seeking other ways to exclude some types of students. And this may be due less to “creaming” and more to schools avoiding the higher-cost students.

In a study I’m working on with some Australian colleagues, we’re seeing that this segregation can have detrimental impacts on achievement for poorer children, without offering much benefit for more advantaged children. Overall it depresses educational achievement.

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