Rich Schools Tank Too

SACRAMENTO, CA~Locke High School principal Frank Wells is fed up: “The more you fail, the more money they throw at you. We’re filthy rich; I don’t want any more of your money. Send me quality teachers.”

Wells is right. What good is more money if principals can’t use it to pay better teachers higher salaries? This commonsense practice is opposed by teacher unions. Another policy they oppose is converting failing district-run schools like Locke to independent public charter schools, which receive fewer education dollars in exchange for more freedom over curriculum and personnel policies. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, negotiations to do just that stalled in recent weeks.

The deal-breaker was insistence by the district, which has systematically failed its neediest schools and students, that teachers would remain its employees and be subject to its teachers union contract. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “And so, the bleating of the teachers union trumped the needs of students. Is anyone surprised?”

Of course not, but the real headline is that Locke High School parents and teachers are fighting back. They’re joining Wells to sign a charter petition to break free from a district dominated for decades by special-interest inertia. Their example could, and should, inspire other struggling California schools to follow suit. Amidst this battle comes a new report from University of Southern California’s Center on Educational Governance.

It finds charter schools typically receive less per-pupil funding, but get “more bang for their buck” because they increase student performance faster than district-run public schools. Those findings corroborate findings by Harvard University economist Caroline M. Hoxby. Compared [to]the performance of their peers in district-run public schools, California students in independent public charter schools are up to 12 percent more likely to be proficient in reading and math on state tests. Yet the process for opening charter schools in California makes them a victim of their own success.

Local school boards are the primary gatekeepers determining which charter schools are allowed to open. That’s like letting political incumbents pick their opponents at election time. However well that arrangement may have worked in the past, charter schools are an increasingly attractive alternative to parents, with close to a quarter-million students attending more than 600 charter schools statewide.

Consequently, local school boards are under pressure from their districts and special interests to vote against applications from quality charter schools, as the Los Angeles school board did in March. It denied the charter application expanding Green Dot Public Schools despite the fact that hundreds of parents had their children on its waiting lists. Even board members Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte, Jon Lauritzen, and Julie Korenstein, who voted against Green Dot, readily admitted its existing charter schools had produced “promising results.”

The Los Angeles Times reported that contributions from the local teachers union largely funded those members’ elections. “[W]ithout a doubt that vote was about a teachers union and three board members not having the backbone to stand up and do the right thing for kids over their ties to the union,” according to board member Mike Lansing, who represents Watts.

To succeed, Locke High School and other struggling schools across the state will need a helping hand from elected officials in Sacramento. In California, local schools boards are the primary authorizers of charter schools. The state’s chartering process currently ranks as one of the worst in the country, thanks in large part to its susceptibility to the kind of politicization plaguing the Los Angeles school board—the same board that will decide the fate of Locke High School’s charter petition.

A growing number of states do not rely exclusively on local school boards, a move that better insulates the chartering process from politics. Instead, they allow multiple entities to consider charter-school applications. Seven states and the District of Columbia have independent, state-level chartering boards. Seven states let colleges and universities grant charters. Three states permit a designated municipal office to charter schools, including mayors and city councils, and in two states non-profit organizations can authorize charter schools.

“I went to Locke thinking I could turn it around, but I ran into a brick wall,” principal Wells explains. Legislators in Sacramento should understand that there is a solution to this problem.

A variety of independent charter school authorizers would help California parents and educators like those from Locke High School tear down the walls that have trapped students in failing schools for far too long.

Vicki E. Murray is a Senior Fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.