California's Charter Schools: An Ever-Changing Landscape

California's Charter Schools: An Ever-Changing Landscape

Preparing students for their future is one of the most important things we can do as a society. One of the basic tools at our disposal in preparing children for the future is education. In light of the California Department of Education's report that many Bay Area public schools are "persistently low achieving," (McClean) we need to take advantage of the resources available to us in order to establish an alternative to traditional public schools. However easy it may be to turn to alternative education models, no education model is without scrutiny over how it may or may not prepare students. The cornerstone of California's Public Schools Accountability Act of 1999 is the Academic Performance Index (API) which measures the performance and growth of school on a variety of academic measures. Charter schools are no exempt from the API standards. The problem with obtaining accurate API scores is that assessing the academic performance of California's charter schools is difficult since many charter schools are targeted toward specific populations such as at-risk students, disabled students, juvenile delinquents among others. Due to the variance in populations among California's charter schools and the autonomy provided in a charter a challenge is presented for researchers who try to make an "apples to apples" comparison of charter schools to regular public schools.

Since their inception in 1992, charter school academic results have been mixed. Many educators and administrative agencies argue that charter schools do not offer a better alternative to regular public schools while data collected by the U.S. Department of Education seems to suggest that charter school academic performance across the United States (particularly in Texas and Florida) achieve year-to-year math and reading improvements putting those schools in the 50th percentile among comparable charter schools and their traditional public school counterparts (Greene, Forster, Winters, 2003). What does that mean for charter schools in California? As with all arguments, California's charter schools are susceptible to both sides of the argument and this paper aims to address those arguments in order to present -- as diplomatic as possible -- the issues involved with measuring academic performance in California's charter schools.

A charter school is a publicly supported school governed by a private board under performance contract with a "charter authorization" for a period of five years. The authorizers of charters in California are the California Department of Education and local school districts (California Department of Education).

Charter schools are public institutions that are more adaptable to change that can be more responsive to the democratic process offered by public institutions and thus are free from many of the regulations that traditional public schools face (Berends, Springer and Walbert, xiii). As a result of this autonomy, charter schools are substantially more advantaged to be able to deliver innovative organizational and educational approaches. For example, in California, a charter school has operational autonomy from the state and local district regulations to be able to recruit their own board of directors who are not elected by the school district's parents as is the case with regular public schools. Also, charter school districts are permitted to carve out provisions in their charter to ensure that a certain percentage of their staff will be certified teachers (Crane and Edwards, 13).

In most cases, the charter school's board will submit a request for a waiver from local and state regulations whereby allowing it to operate independently of the local and state-level administrations, but still be kept under the guidance of the local and state-level administrations by being required to submit annually a preliminary budget, two interim audits, a final audit, and various other financials (Charter School Law Ranking and Scorecard, 2010). In California in addition to enrollment demands, charter schools must demonstrate adequate or improved student performance under federal and state accountability systems just like their traditional school counterparts (Crane and Edwards, 2).

As of 2009, there were 771 charter schools up and running in California (Charter School Law Ranking and Scorecard, 2010). Of those California charter schools, 89 opened their doors to students for the first time in the 2009-2010 school year and there are six more slated to open in the future . In March 2010 the California Department of Education issued it's most scathing report of "persistently underperforming" schools which listed over 100 charter schools as "persistently underperforming."

Charter schools reflect the varying philosophies, goals, and programs of their boards and staffs, and they often serve diverse student populations. Some charter schools focus on at-risk youth like the majority of the 182 charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District (Crane and Edwards, 20). Other charter schools focus on gifted students. Still others focus on traditionally more controversial students such as pregnant teenagers and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning teenagers who attend Opportunities for Learning in La Canada, California. One of the reasons why many charter schools serve targeted populations is that the procedures by which new charter schools are created often encourage such targeting (Greene, Zimmer, The Center for Education Reform, et al.). Of course, it's to be expected that charter schools, like many school reform efforts, would emphasize helping disadvantaged students who need it the most. However, there are a handful of charter schools across the United States who serve targeted populations where academic performance is not an issue. It is essential to keep in mind just because a charter school has a smaller year-to-year improvement in test scores than traditional public schools, does not necessarily reveal anything about a charter school's performance (Carnoy, Jacobsen, Mishel, and Rothstein, 82). It in the course of collecting research for this paper, scant data was uncovered to indicate that a charter school may do a better job of teaching, but their performance on tests is more impressive because their students are more likely to face usually severe obstacles to learning over which the school has no control. This is one of the main reasons parents choose a charter school: a narrowly focused learning environment almost specifically designed for their student(s).

In California what makes the overall charter school debate so interesting is its unparalleled variety of charter schools, such as "conversions"