Each and every year, there is a significant debate; some would say a battle, others, a war, over the future of charter schools in Massachusetts.  Proponents tend to see these schools as offering students salvation from the failings of “monopoly” school systems, while opponents see the charters as unfair competition that is bleeding mainstream school systems of the very reform funds necessary to reform and improve.  This perpetual, ideological war over charters reflects poorly on the education sector, and can undermine the public’s support for public education. As a field, we need to do better than dissolving annually into battle while allowing ourselves to be distracted from the substantial challenges of improving education for all our children.  “Doing better” will take leadership, especially from policymakers.

One of the most visible and controversial aspects of the landmark Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 (MERA) was the provision creating a new form of public schooling in Massachusetts, charter schools.  MERA authorized the creation of twenty-five “Commonwealth Charter Schools” designed for the following purposes:

“ (1) to stimulate the development of innovative programs within public education; (2) to provide opportunities for innovative learning and assessments; (3) to provide parents and students with greater options in choosing schools within and outside their school districts; (4) to provide teachers with a vehicle for establishing schools with alternative, innovative methods of educational instruction and school structure and management; (5) to encourage performance-based educational programs and; (6) to hold teachers and school administrators accountable for students’ educational outcomes.”
-Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993

Subsequent legislation modified the original charter school provisions in a variety of ways by, for example increasing the number of available charters, altering the finance mechanism and in 1997, creating an entirely new form of charter, the “Horace Mann Charter Schools”.  These “in-district” charters were conceived as an opportunity for municipally operated school systems to take advantage of flexibility and autonomy offered to Commonwealth charters.

The first charter schools opened in the fall of 1995.  This fall will mark the beginning of the12th year of what many policy leaders consider “the charter school experiment”.  Notwithstanding this passage into early adolescence, charter schools are still not fully accepted as a permanent feature of the state’s education landscape.  In the 2005-6 school year, there were 57 charter schools in Massachusetts serving 21,866 students.  The jury is still out on matters of academic outcomes.  Judgments on the performance of charter schools are often clouded by incomplete or ambiguous data and various qualifying factors that affect educational results.  On the other hand, charter students and parents, in large numbers, appear to be highly satisfied.  Long waiting lists exist for many of the schools.  Meanwhile, many mainstream educators continue to resent the presence of these schools, decrying the unfairness of their admissions policies, their accountability obligations, and/or their financing.   This mixture of ambiguity and conflicting perspective creates a fertile field for battle.  An enormous amount of otherwise potentially constructive energy, human and financial resources is wasted on this struggle.

It is high time for a reckoning on charter schools.  Such a reckoning should include three components: research, policy development and action.  In other words, we, as a state, need to analyze what has been accomplished by the provision of this new form of schooling.  We need to examine the range of its costs and benefits.  We need a probing discussion on the purpose of charter schools in the next phase of education reform.  If we are to continue with charters as part of the system, as seems inevitable, how many charters do we ultimately want? For what purpose?  What are our goals?  Now that we’ve had a decade plus of experimentation, we need to become strategic and explicit about our intentions.  Lastly, we need some immediate action to revitalize the failed experiment of Horace Mann charter schools.

Research – Although there’s been a fair amount of “advocacy” research on charter schools, there has been, to date, no comprehensive and independent examination of the charter school experience in Massachusetts.  As a basis for policy development and action, we desperately need objective evidence on charter school performance and impact.  Here are some of the questions that need to be addressed:

The central question is: How academically successful are charter schools?  How does their performance compare with district schools serving comparable populations?

Other key questions are:
-Who have charter schools been serving?  Not serving?

-Have charter schools been innovative? In which areas?  What are the applications of these innovations to mainstream public schools?

-What are the strengths and weaknesses of charter schools?

-What is their impact on mainstream, district schools? 

-What have been the benefits and costs of the charter school finance model?

-What has been the impact of charter schools on the distribution of public school choice in Massachusetts?

-How does the Massachusetts charter school structure and experience of charter schools compare with that of other states?
 
Although some of these questions cannot be answered fully and finally, we have an obligation to probe as deeply as possible after an experiment of this duration.

Policy- Research will help to inform and stimulate some vigorous policy discussion and the formulation of long-term policy strategies to build on the strengths and eliminate the weaknesses of the charter school experience.  Notwithstanding the list of purposes for charter schools in MERA (see quotation above), there consistently has been ambiguity and wide diversity of views on the role charter schools should play, if any, in the future of public education in Massachusetts.  There is a fundamental dilemma that needs to be addressed.  The questions are:
 
-Should charter schools be a limited network of specialized, innovative, educational laboratories designed to develop and export new and effective practices to mainstream schools?

Or

-Are charter schools an expansive new component of a 21st century public education delivery system that features a portfolio of different schooling options for a diverse body of students?  In other words, are charter schools an alternative delivery system designed to give students and parents more choice and mainstream schools some competition to drive improvement?

Proponents of charters used both of these arguments and a variety of others in advocating that the Legislature follow Minnesota’s example in allowing for the creation of charter schools.  In the end, the Legislature looked favorably on the concept of charter schools but failed to resolve the question of purpose by simply taking an “all of the above” approach and listing multiple purposes.  The problem with this approach was that it did not resolve the question of “educational labs versus an alternative delivery system”.  The answer to this question is critical to resolving the heated disputes over limits on the numbers of charters and the financing of the schools.  For example, the lab concept would seem to indicate a very limited number of state financed schools whereas if we are establishing an alternative delivery system, then the number of charters would presumably be unlimited and existing local and state funds would be diverted for this purpose.  If we wanted a “hybrid” system of some charters and some mainstream schools, we would need to set some target proportions for the different components of the expanded public educations system.

Unless and until we resolve this dilemma of the central purpose of charters, a dilemma which has existed since the onset of charter legislation, we will have no principle with which to guide the future of charter schools.  In fact, the answer to this “purpose” question on charters will have a major effect on how we view the comparative success of existing charter schools, thus complicating the research task. If charter schools are laboratories of innovation then we should judge them on the degree of innovation and the educational effectiveness and general applicability of those innovations.  If, on the other hand, charters constitute an alternative delivery system, we should judge them on how well they serve students without regard to innovation. 

Once policymakers establish some strategic direction for the future of charter schools, they can begin to address tactical questions like financing modifications, geographic distribution, capital costs, types of students to be served, accountability, school size etc.

Immediate Action on Horace Mann Charters - Finally, there is the problem of Horace Mann charter schools, an aspect of the charter school experiment that has not had a sufficient trial.  The Horace Mann attempt to build state policy on the success of Boston’s Pilot Schools must be viewed, in spite of some exceptional schools, as a failed policy experiment.  As the Rennie Center has documented in its recent report, entitled “The Road Not Taken: Horace Mann Charter Schools in Massachusetts”, there simply has not been sufficient interest to truly test a promising concept.  There are currently only seven Horace Mann charter schools operating out of an authorized, potential total of 48.  In addition, there has not been a single Horace Mann application for a charter in the past two years.  The Rennie Center report identifies some reasons for poor uptake and makes some recommendations for policy corrections that might enhance the attractiveness of the Horace Mann option.

The report identifies a set of financial, political, communication and technical barriers to the development of Horace Mann charter schools.  We make concrete suggestions to improve the available information and outreach efforts, to enhance the autonomy of the schools, to develop potential leaders, provide start-up assistance and better document the success of these schools.

We see the Horace Mann schools as having a great deal of positive potential, especially the possibility of dampening the ardor and diminishing the waste of the war on Commonwealth charters.  We believe the Horace Mann recommendations are worth pursuing and that action should be taken immediately in order to give this aspect of charter law a chance to realize its potential and be tested.
 
It is time to settle the debate about how charter schools are to be part of the state’s education future.  Leaders need to make judgments about past experience based on evidence and use this analysis to formulate decisions on strategies for the future.  The questions involved are not simple, nor do they evoke absolute answers.  For example, research on charter school academic performance will not likely be conclusive.  Dueling research studies will continue to capture headlines on the presumed superiority or inferiority of charter schools.  We should accept that there is nothing inherent in the governance structure of charter schools that predicts, in and of itself, superior performance.  Some charter schools will be excellent, while some will be poor.

Massachusetts has to grapple with this ambiguity and chart a course.  It is important that our future strategy on charter schools be guided by a comprehensive “theory of action”, a rationale for the strategy and its predicted benefits.  With any luck, this “theory of action” will be grounded not just in rhetoric about structural and governance change, but it will fundamentally involve the core business of education, teaching and learning, since when all is said and done, it is the quality of the teaching, regardless of school structure and governance, that will make the most powerful difference in improving student learning.  Policy-makers would do well to be mindful of this.

If the Commonwealth can commission some credible, objective and thorough research, engineer a thoughtful policy development process designed to conceive a unified strategy on charter schools and lastly, take some action to upgrade the Horace Mann option, then policy leaders would be taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from the charter school experience, thereby fully capitalizing on the very substantial investment they have made to date in charter schools. If charters are an asset, they should be developed.  If they are plagued with problems, the problems should be fixed.  Either way, it is time to move forward.   In so doing, leaders would be exercising the kind of leadership that is essential to moving all Massachusetts schools and students into a brighter, 21st century future where each and every child receives a quality education.

S. Paul Reville is the president of the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy and a lecturer and director of the Education Policy and Management Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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