A Drain on Public Funds and Other Negative Aspects of Charter Schools

This blog entry will analyze the Charter Schools Siphon Public Funds article while also using other sources to highlight the negative aspects of charter schools.

In early 2008, the State College Area School District (SCASD) reported that it “will lose about $2.2 million on charter schools this year […]. And that number is expected to grow.” Dennis Younkin, the SCASD Business Administrator, uses the word “lose” to demonstrate what is happening when a student transfers from the public school to the charter school. According to Gowen Roper, a SCASD school board member, it is difficult to fill the “financial hole” left within the school district which is partially caused by the mandatory reimbursement of charter schools. Of the total $101 million budget, Younkin considers the $2.2 million (2.18%) a loss. There is some concurrence among charter school CEOs. The current suggestion is that there should be an individual fund stream directed toward charter schools instead of one flowing through the public school system.

Opponents of charter schools claim that they do not increase achievement. In August 2006, the Washington Post published an article that stated, “Fourth-graders in traditional public schools nationwide did somewhat better on average than those in charter schools in reading and mathematics in 2003, [...].” Based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test given in 2003, fourth-grade students at traditional schools scored 4.2 points higher in reading and 4.7 points higher in math than those fourth-grade students at charter schools. However, the test apparently does not account or adjust for the “lack of a random sample, different levels of parental support and different levels of learning before the students reached fourth grade.” Furthermore, several studies point out that “when researchers looked only at schools in cities with high minority populations, the difference in reading scores between the average traditional school and average charter school disappeared.” Other studies supported this conclusion when traditional and charter schools were compared in different localities.

According the RAND Corporation, “Opponents argue that charter schools lead to increased racial or ethnic stratification of students […].” However, it argues that “when the researchers looked at whether transfers to charter schools affected the distribution of students by race or ethnicity, they found that, in most sites, the racial composition of the charter school entered by a transferring student was similar to that of the traditional public school that he or she had left.”

Charter schools continue to be a topic of debate, but it seems like the strongest arguments for opponents deal primarily with cost draining from the public schools and with achievement comparisons. There are four charter schools in the State College Area School District: Young Scholars of Central PA Charter School, Nittany Valley Charter School, Centre Learning Community Charter School, and Wonderland Charter School. All schools are monitored by the SCASD, which is the governing body responsible for issuing licenses to each charter school in the district.

The next several blog entries will relate to school choice (based on an interview with Jillian Reese) and student schedules/curricula at the various charter schools in the SCASD.