Do more charter schools have certain built-in advantages that lead to socio-economic segregation in public education, thus making the job of traditional public schools that much harder?
Some local school administrators certainly think so, but charter supporters are calling foul.
As families with the economic means and the motivation to enroll and send their child to a charter school that may be located outside the region do so, local superintendents say, it can leave districts with a higher proportion of less-advantaged and poorer children who aren’t able to do the same.
Indeed, the main reason many families who left the Gill-Montague Regional School District for School Choice or charter schools gave for doing so, were concerns about the peer-to-peer interaction between their children and other students, wrote Superintendent Michael Sullivan in a letter to state Senate President Stanley Rosenberg last year urging him to oppose raising the current 120-school limit on new or expanded charter schools in Massachusetts.
Sullivan said that scenario can become cyclical: “My concern is that this dynamic could lead to a negative cycle … resulting in higher concentrations of underserved students in the districts they leave,” Sullivan said. “This in turn could lead to even greater interest in leaving for schools where parents perceive there will be a higher percentage of students who come from more advantaged circumstances.”
He said that trend could leave his district with a disproportionate number of students who have a harder time doing well in school.
Tamara Grogan, a Greenfield High School French teacher and member of the board at Greenfield’s Four Rivers Charter Public School, doesn’t deny some of those concerns may have validity, especially when it comes to parental motivation and transportation.
“The place where the playing field is not level is in applications. That’s a valid criticism. If you’re a parent who’s willing to fill out a piece of paper, you’re different from a parent who is not willing to do so,” she said. “(District schools) have to bus everyone in, and (Four Rivers) doesn’t have to. The experience I’ve had though is most parents who are living out of the area are doing things to get there… carpooling… they’re finding ways.”
But Grogan said most local district schools can take advantage of state and federal grant programs to build or repair facilities, and that’s less common in charter schools. Four Rivers had to foot the entire $5.8 million cost of purchasing the campus and constructing its main instructional building, Peter Garbus, the principal, said. The state school building assistance bureau contributes about three quarters of school construction costs.
“Does Four Rivers have a gym? Does it have an auditorium? No,” Grogan said. “Does it have an art studio or a big music room? No. It has a rusty barn with a concrete floor, and that’s where they do all the gym stuff when it’s raining outside.”
Beyond just economic stratification, many critics of charters schools also accuse them of being able to artificially “cherry-pick” the students who attend their schools, either reducing the number of special needs students they accept by failing to offer adequate programming for them or by encouraging students with low academic performance to transfer back to their home district through strict discipline policies.
Four Rivers’ wait list currently has 74 students on it.
But according to state education data, that doesn’t appear to be the case in Franklin County, at least.
Garbus said the student demographics at his school largely mirror those of the county at large.
By race, data from DESE for 2015 shows that Four Rivers’ 217-student population included about half as many African American students as the county overall, according to federal census data, but nearly twice the number of both Asian and Hispanic students. Eighty-five and a half percent of the school’s students are white compared to 94.1 percent of the county’s total population.
By educational subgroup, the state’s Charter Analysis and Review Tool shows that Four Rivers, in particular, enrolled a higher number of students whose first language is not English, English Language Learning students, and students with disabilities between 2012 and 2016 than a comparative index compiled using all of the students from the grades Four Rivers serves, 7 through 12, in the school’s sending districts.
Four Rivers has historically enrolled slightly fewer low-income and high-needs students than the index, but those numbers are rising. This year, the charter enrolled more low-income students than the index, and it has enrolled more high needs students than the index since the 2014-2015 school year.
To the south, the statistics look a bit different. Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School enrolls either at or slightly below the index, though it enrolls substantially fewer low income students. Pioneer Valley Performing Arts enrolls fewer students than the index in all subgroups besides students with disabilities, which has slightly exceeded the index since 2013, the data shows.
Garbus said he believes Four Rivers is already socio-economically diverse, and welcomes the expanded lottery proposal in a recent Senate bill, which would automatically enter an application for every student in the school’s sending district and give those selected the option to enroll. “That way, every family in the county would know about us. We welcome that.”
On the discipline end, Garbus said Four Rivers does have high academic expectations, but he can only remember a handful of students who’ve left to find an easier program. Concerns leveled by some critics about charter schools using strict discipline policies to encourage parents to pull low-performing students from the school, Garbus said, don’t reflect what happens at his school.
The CHART tool shows both the in-school and out-of-school suspension rates at Four Rivers declining since 2012, though the in-school rate, at 2.2 percent, is still over the state average of 1.8 percent.
The out-of-school rate was 0.9 percent, well below the 2.9 percent state average in 2015, but has been slightly above the average for the four years prior.
The school had a 97.2 percent four-year graduation rate for 2015, compared to the county average of 86.6.
Chinese Immersion and PVPA have in- and out-of-school suspension rates below the state average, in many years registering none at all.
“I hear people making those claims about the system in general, but I just don’t know who they’re talking about,” Garbus said.
Marc Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, said stratification along economic lines in the public school system is already happening regardless of the existence of charter schools as families take advantage of their affluence to select places to live with more desirable or high-performing school systems.
“That goes on at a macro level every day where people move to communities where they can live in and have exclusivity,” Kenen said. “That’s an issue of class in our society. We don’t see large numbers fleeing (to charter schools) who are high status, in fact we actually see more low status. That’s a bigger issue than charter schools.”
Still, Mohawk Superintendent Michael Buoniconti said he thinks the state’s policy needs to be more specific about where charter schools should and shouldn’t be located. “When you have districts where you have chronically underperforming schools, then that is a major issue,” he said. “But if you have a school district in a rural environment with mostly high performing schools, why would you do that?”
Proposals, including the ballot question, have typically been targeted at low-performing districts.
Charter school accountability is also a problem for Buoniconti. To get his district’s budget passed, he has to attend nine separate town meetings and pitch his case to the taxpayers. Charters, which are governed by boards of directors, he said, receive their funding directly from the state and have no such obligation. They also aren’t required to have unions, though Garbus said his school’s teachers are welcome to unionize if they want.
“There’s a transparency issue. They just get a check. It’s not a level playing field,” Buoniconti said. “All my colleagues, we’re all competitive, we’re all game for offering the best product possible to give people options. We accept and embrace that, but not when it’s not a level playing field. Charter schools are supposed to be public schools, so why don’t they have to go to the public, too?”
Sullivan echoed that sentiment, noting that it’s difficult for the public to question the charters’ budgets, use of funding, or curriculums.
Garbus noted the school must produce and release an annual report, which is used by the state to determine whether its charter is renewed. “The state is watching us,” he said. That report includes a breakdown of the school’s budget, as well as various enrollment and retention statistics.
TOMORROW: One parent sees both sides.
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Tom Relihan at:
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