Charter Schools and their Enemies

Charter Schools and their Enemies
Thomas Sowell
Basic Books
2020
288 pages

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In Charter Schools and their Enemies, American black economist and social theorist, Thomas Sowell, writes a detailed defence of the somewhat beleaguered charter schools in America’s education system. Though not unique to America, charter schools have been rapidly expanding in popularity there over the last three decades or so and gaining enemies as they do.

Charter Schools are publicly funded but enjoy much of the independence of private schools. Unlike other publicly funded schools however, their status is subject to ongoing review and they can lose their charters if they fail to deliver satisfactory outcomes. In fact, as Sowell points out with masses of comparative data, they usually exceed the performance of public schools and have become the victims of their own success.

Sowell’s methodology is meticulous. He is scrupulous in avoiding “apples and oranges” comparisons. So he compares public and charter schools by choosing pairs that draw from the same disadvantaged communities, with the same ethnic background and are co-located on the same campuses. Again and again, his graphs show the charter schools outperforming public schools in the key metrics of English language and Mathematics. There is an extraordinary consistency across states and neighbourhood types.

Sowell sets out the various factors that advantage charter students over their peers in the public system and they are many and varied. Broadly speaking, they are the factors we would identify here in comparisons between private and public schools. There is of course the key difference that charter schools’ intake is determined by a straight lottery; there is no selection process. However, the parents who choose to apply for places for their children in charter schools, in preference to the neighbourhood public school, are clearly people who have specific aspirations for their children. This Sowell would agree, is one important constituent of advantage. Such parents also have to sign up to much stricter terms and conditions particularly with regard to discipline and attendance, than applies in public schools. Bad behaviour has serious consequences in charter schools. Equally, because they are not unionised, charter schools also hold their teachers to account; there are serious consequences for poor performance. Interestingly, Sowell notes that charters set more store by the performance record of teacher applicants than their qualifications.

There are now thousands of charter schools across America, serving millions of children, and their success does not go unnoticed among philanthropists. Because they are seen as meaningful ways of helping disadvantaged children, they attract the support of those who believe, as Sowell puts it, that “good education is the biggest opportunity for a better life”. Perhaps an even more significant advantage is the freedom they have to shape their curriculum. The focus is on educational fundamentals, not “adult ideological interests” often filtered through such subjects as “ethnic studies” and “sex education”, the kind of stuff that sends children out into the world indoctrinated with “the ideology of victimhood and entitlement” rather than the educational tools to succeed in life. Unlike public schools, charter schools prioritise concrete educational outcomes. This does not mean the academic focus is narrow. Facilities like chess clubs, school magazines and field trips are a significant part of the curriculum, facilitated by the longer hours and longer terms of charter schools. Nor is social development neglected as is evidenced by the fact that male charter school students are “less likely to be incarcerated” and females “less likely to become teen mothers” compared with students from public schools. One advantage charter students don’t have though is smaller class sizes. This is reflective both of the reach-out ethos of the schools and their high level of popularity. The fact that one charter network, Success Academy, has typically 17,000  applicants for 3,000 places is indicative of the level of demand amongst the current generation of parents.

An interesting piece of research that Sowell cites is a follow up study of students who were unsuccessful in the lottery for admission. They did not do as well academically or otherwise as the students who were lucky enough to win charter school places. So, Sowell observes, the charge that charter schools are “siphoning off” the most motivated isn’t altogether true. Charter schools of themselves make a difference to motivation. One might also be inclined to add that perhaps public schools make a difference too, in the negative sense.

Sowell cites shocking instances of bad and dangerous behaviour in public schools, behaviour that “dissipates the time, energy and morale of teachers”, suggesting the system is chaotic, even “anarchic”, in certain neighbourhoods. In fact, it is the tolerance of such behaviour that is the most shocking of all, a curious contrast to the preoccupation with “safe spaces” in college campuses. Perhaps the two situations are not unrelated?

Sowell rejects the charge of “apartheid” or “segregation” levelled against charter school because there is “no intentional social engineering” in their operation. They are located in disadvantaged areas so they tend to have a socio-economic student population reflective of the neighbourhood. Not unlike public schools in many cases. If this is segregation, then it must be conceded that the results are proving far more positive than the results of integration and diversity policies such as the now abandoned school bussing initiative which only served to deepen tensions between social and ethnic groups.

Charter schools focus on the needs of children, not adults, on educational outcomes not ideology, on strategies that demonstrably make a difference, if not to all, at least to as many as can be reached. So why are they so fiercely opposed and by whom? Sowell lists the inter-connected network of “teacher unions, politicians and the civil rights establishment”. Teacher unions obviously lose union dues as non-union school networks expand. Politicians of a certain stripe, quite extraordinarily in the US, get millions in political campaign contributions from teacher unions. A vicious circle of mutual interest. As a result of this alignment, officialdom not only “slow walks” the process of authorisation of charters but blocks their attempts to acquire disused school buildings by a variety of ruses. New York and California lead the way in introducing so called “reforms” to make charter schools more “transparent and accountable”, an extraordinary claim given that it is only charter schools that are subject to “high stakes testing” and assessment to begin with, the very thing that teacher unions normally have an issue with. Sowell fears that the advance of such “reforms” will effectively lead to the “denaturing” of charter schools, if not their elimination. Californian governor, Gavin Newsom, is seeking to give the final word to the teacher unions themselves in deciding if new applications for charter schools are “needed”. Sowell points out the anomaly of education being the only sector of American life where “the incumbents get to decide how much competition they are prepared to tolerate”.

Charter schools rub up against the ideology that claims inequalities are “rooted in social, political and economic structures”. This way of thinking admits only of solutions that are equally systemic in social, political and economic terms. Sowell makes very interesting points about the inherent inequalities of life and the way they play out even within an individual family among children raised in the same household, educated in the same schools and enjoying the same standard of living. Social engineering towards “inclusion” and “diversity” has not delivered good educational outcomes for America. However, the charter school movement shows there is much that can be done in a local context, through engaging the interest of parents, to make a difference that has an enduring impact on the lives of a significant number of children and in turn on their communities. Taking a leaf from the charter school book instead of forcing them to sing from the politically correct hymn sheet might better serve the children and future of American society.