If you work in a US school where academic achievement (for whatever reason) is low, by now you’ve probably heard of School Improvement Grants (SIG grants). Where a few years ago federal school improvement grants effected a small handful of schools each year, the program has suddenly mushroomed into a primary policy focus for the Obama Administration. Now over 850 US schools have SIG grants.
SIG grants are supposed to be a tool for improving academic performance in schools with profound academic issues. One model for implementing the grant, the Restart Model, actually allows a school district to turn such a school into a charter school.
What is a Charter School?
Charter schools operate independently (like private schools) but still get public money. The local school district grants the school a "charter" so that the charter school can operate under its own set of rules. Several large companies exist that grant something like franchises to help start up and manage charter schools. How independent are they? That depends on state laws. The rules for charter schools vary from state to state, and at the moment there are ten states that don't allow charter schools at all.
The charter school concept is easy to understand. While they continue to get public money, charter schools don't have to play by the same rules as other public schools. Their increased flexibility in things like curriculum design, teacher salaries, and teacher accountability is supposed to result in better outcomes for students (which usually means higher test scores). This “bargain” (as one author describes it) can be summed up like this: Give us money and leave us alone, and we’ll produce better results. If we don’t you can close us (and then you can keep your money).
Are Charter Schools Better?
Charter schools in the US started opening in 1992, with the first one in Minnesota. Over the next few years a number of states enacted charter school laws. Since the late 1990's, charter schools have been held up as a model of success in public education. But while glowing examples of charter school success exist, recent studies seem to indicate that, overall, charter schools do no better than non-charter public schools.
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University released a study in 2009 that looked at individual charter school students. The study compared the academic performance of charter school students to students in nearby public (non-charter) schools. That study found that about 17% of charter school students (1 in 6 of them) did better than their nearby peers in non-charter schools. About 37% (1 in 3 of them) did worse, and half of charter school students performed about the same as their nearby non-charter school peers.
Charter Schools Seeking SIG Grants
Does the charter school model work? Opinions vary. But here’s one enlightening tidbit to come out of any examination of the data on where this flood of new SIG grant funding is going: while 31 public school are asking for SIG grant funding in order to become charter schools (under the Restart Model), 58 charter schools across the country are performing poorly enough to obtain SIG grant funding so that they can implement the Transformation or Turnaround model and begin doing things that, in theory, a charter school is already supposed to be doing.
There are about 97,000 schools in America. Around 5,000 of those are charter schools. Looking at the 850 or so SIG grant holders right now, just under 1% of US public (non-charter) schools have obtained a SIG grant. And a little more than 1.1% of charter schools in the US have obtained a SIG grant.
Two conclusions seem obvious. First, charter schools are failing at about the same rate as non-charter public schools. Second, failing schools are not particularly interested in becoming charter schools (if the number of SIG grant schools using the Restart Model is any indicator).
Sources:
- Eric Dillon, SIG Grants and the Charter School Bargain, The Quick & The ED, April 28, 2011
- John Fensterwald, $4 million for charter: tax dollars at work, Nov. 8 2010
- Amanda Paulson, Study: On average, charter schools do no better than public schools, The Christian Science Monitor, June 29, 2010
Greg Cruey - Greg Cruey is an educator and journalist. He works as an educational interventionist specializing in a small, rural school in Central ...
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