A competitive edge for schools
EVIDENCE SUGGESTS that the Commonwealth's economic fate hinges on its ability to train and retain skilled and educated workers. Improving our public school system both strengthens the training of tomorrow's workers and encourages today's workers to stay and educate their children locally. For both reasons, we need to evaluate and build upon recent education reforms, including promoting charter and pilot schools.
On the positive side, the historic reforms enacted in 1993 have helped Massachusetts become one of the top five states in the country in math and science. MCAS testing has catalyzed improvement in basic math and English aptitude. And once outrageous town-by-town funding disparities have been narrowed.
We are not, however, moving quickly or comprehensively enough. We must remember that the MCAS graduation requirement is merely an eighth-grade standard. And troubling racial and ethnic disparities persist. Six times as many African-American students as white students, and more than seven times as many Hispanics, do not make it over the bar. Close to 80 percent of the 115 lowest-performing schools in the state are located in heavily minority urban districts.
A powerful strategy for change is represented by charter schools. Charter schools are public schools, open to any child, free of charge, founded by parents and community leaders who seek an alternative to the district school. They feature greater autonomy -- read accountability -- and are proven to foster intensive parent involvement, one of the magic ingredients in student success. Moreover, every five years, charters are reviewed by the state and, unlike district schools, can be closed if found failing.
Some have characterized charter schools as drains on existing districts. On the contrary, charters are actually a strategy to improve district schools, because competition and choice make everyone better.
Charter schools have improved local public education by:
Fostering excellence through experimentation. Statewide, in 2005, a higher percentage of students in charter schools scored proficient or advanced on all 10 MCAS tests compared with district averages. Urban charter schools outperformed their sending districts by wide margins. Charter schools are often more successful in part because they have freedom to fail. When schools are given the opportunity to fail, they are more likely to take risks to outperform the status quo.
Spurring wider education reform. One example: In cooperation with the Boston Teachers Union, Boston created pilot schools in 1995 as a competitive response to state legislation creating charters. Pilot schools are similar to charters in that they are autonomous and invite new ideas and standards. They also offer impressive results, including higher college matriculation, graduation, and attendance, lower transfer and suspension rates, and better or comparable MCAS scores.
Keeping families in cities. Charter and pilot schools are popular. Statewide, more than 21,000 students have enrolled in charter schools, and families have placed 15,000 children on waiting lists. This is a powerful vote of support by parents and students who are being attracted back into public education. For example, at TechBoston Academy, a pilot school, one-third of the entering freshman class came from private, parochial schools.
Unfortunately, the current state cap on charter schools works at cross purposes to the hopes of thousands of parents -- disproportionately poor and minority -- who seek effective alternatives. In Boston and some other urban districts, the local cap, which limits charters to 9 percent of school spending in any one district, threatens to stop the charter school experiment in its tracks in the very places it has proved most necessary. Also disturbingly, the same union that agreed to create pilot schools almost 10 years now has chosen to stand in the way. It has been two years since the BTU has allowed a new pilot school to open in the Boston public school system.
On Tuesday, the Joint Committee on Education will consider several proposed charter school measures. The charter school cap should be raised in the urban districts, and the BTU should end its opposition to new pilot schools. We need all of our children educated to the standards of the new knowledge economy. We know what works, and we should all do what we can to build on the accomplishments of a decade of education reform.
Paul Grogan is president and CEO of the Boston Foundation and co-author of ''Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival."